Looking at the pacct File With acctcom (System Administration Guide: Advanced Administration)

System Administration Guide: Advanced Administration

Looking at the `pacct` File With `acctcom`

At any time, you can examine the contents of the /var/adm/pacctn files, or any file with records in the acct.h format, by using the acctcom program. If you do not specify any files and do not provide any standard input when you run this command, the acctcom command reads the pacct file. Each record read by the acctcom command represents information about a terminated process. Active processes can be examined by running the ps command. The default output of the acctcom command provides the following information:

Sample acctcom output follows:

# acctcom
COMMAND                           START    END          REAL     CPU    MEAN
NAME       USER     TTYNAME       TIME     TIME       (SECS)  (SECS) SIZE(K)
#accton    root      ?            02:30:01 02:30:01     0.03    0.01  304.00
turnacct   adm       ?            02:30:01 02:30:01     0.42    0.01  320.00
mv         adm       ?            02:30:01 02:30:01     0.07    0.01  504.00
utmp_upd   adm       ?            02:30:01 02:30:01     0.03    0.01  712.00
utmp_upd   adm       ?            02:30:01 02:30:01     0.01    0.01  824.00
utmp_upd   adm       ?            02:30:01 02:30:01     0.01    0.01  912.00
utmp_upd   adm       ?            02:30:01 02:30:01     0.01    0.01  920.00
utmp_upd   adm       ?            02:30:01 02:30:01     0.01    0.01 1136.00
utmp_upd   adm       ?            02:30:01 02:30:01     0.01    0.01  576.00
closewtm   adm       ?            02:30:01 02:30:01     0.10    0.01  664.00

Command name (pound (#) sign if the command was executed with superuser privileges)
User name
tty name (listed as ? if unknown)
Command starting time
Command ending time
Real time (in seconds)
CPU time (in seconds)
Mean size (in Kbytes)

You can obtain the following information by using acctcom options:

State of the fork/exec flag (1 for fork without exec)
System exit status
Hog factor
Total kcore minutes
CPU factor
Characters transferred
Blocks read

The following table describes the acctcom options.

Table 20–6 acctcom Options


Option	Description
`-a`	Shows average statistics about the processes selected. The statistics are printed after the output is recorded.
`-b`	Reads the files backward, showing latest commands first. This option has no effect if reading standard input.
`-f`	Prints the `fork/exec` flag and system exit status columns. The output is an octal number.
`-h`	Instead of mean memory size, shows the hog factor, which is the fraction of total available CPU time consumed by the process during its execution. Hog factor = total_CPU_time/elapsed_time.
`-i`	Prints columns containing the I/O counts in the output.
`-k`	Shows total `kcore` `minutes` instead of memory size.
`-m`	Shows mean core size. This is the default.
`-q`	Prints average statistics, not output records.
`-r`	Shows CPU factor: `user_time`/(`system_time + user_time)`.
`-t`	Shows separate system and user CPU times.
`-v`	Excludes column headings from the output.
`-C` `sec`	Shows only processes with total CPU time (system plus user) exceeding `sec` seconds.
`-e` `time`	Shows processes existing at or before `time`, given in the format hr[:min[:sec]].
`-E` `time`	Shows processes starting at or before `time`, given in the format hr[:min[:sec]]. Using the same time for both `-S` and `-E`, shows processes that existed at the time.
`-g` `group`	Shows only processes that belong to `group`.
`-H` `factor`	Shows only processes that exceed `factor`, where `factor` is the “hog factor” (see the `-h` option).
`-I` `chars`	Shows only processes that transferred more characters than the cutoff number specified by `chars`.
`-l` `line`	Show only processes belonging to the terminal `/dev/line`.
`-n` `pattern`	Shows only commands matching `pattern` (a regular expression except that “`+`” means one or more occurrences).
`-o` `ofile`	Instead of printing the records, copies them in `acct.h` format to `ofile`.
`-O` `sec`	Shows only processes with CPU system time exceeding `sec` seconds.
`-s` `time`	Show processes existing at or after `time`, given in the format `hr`[:`min`[:`sec`]].
`-S` `time`	Show processes starting at or after `time`, given in the format `hr`[:`min`[:`sec`]].
`-u` `user`	Shows only processes that belong to `user`.