runacct is the main daily accounting shell procedure. It is normally initiated using cron. runacct processes connect, fee, disk, and process accounting files. It also prepares summary files for prdaily or billing purposes. runacct is distributed only to source code licensees.

runacct takes care not to damage active accounting files or summary files in the event of errors. It records its progress by writing descriptive diagnostic messages into active. When an error is detected, a message is written to /dev/console, mail (see mail(1)) is sent to root and adm, and runacct terminates. runacct uses a series of lock files to protect against re-invocation. The files lock and lock1 are used to prevent simultaneous invocation, and lastdate is used to prevent more than one invocation per day.

runacct breaks its processing into separate, restartable states using statefile to remember the last state completed. It accomplishes this by writing the state name into statefile. runacct then looks in statefile to see what it has done and to determine what to process next. states are executed in the following order:

SETUP

Move active accounting files into working files.

WTMPFIX

Verify integrity of wtmpx file, correcting date changes if necessary.

CONNECT

Produce connect session records in tacct.h format.

PROCESS

Convert process accounting records into tacct.h format.

MERGE

Merge the connect and process accounting records.

FEES

Convert output of chargefee into tacct.h format, merge with connect, and process accounting records.

DISK

Merge disk accounting records with connect, process, and fee accounting records.

MERGETACCT

Merge the daily total accounting records in daytacct with the summary total accounting records in /var/adm/acct/sum/tacct.

CMS

Produce command summaries.

USEREXIT

Any installation dependent accounting programs can be included here.

CLEANUP

Clean up temporary files and exit. To restart runacct after a failure, first check the active file for diagnostics, then fix any corrupted data files, such as pacct or wtmpx. The lock, lock1, and lastdate files must be removed before runacct can be restarted. The argument mmdd is necessary if runacct is being restarted. mmdd specifies the month and day for which runacct will rerun the accounting. The entry point for processing is based on the contents of statefile; to override this, include the desired state on the command line to designate where processing should begin.

/var/adm/wtmpx

History of user access and administration information

/var/adm/pacctincr

/var/adm/acct/nite/active

/var/adm/acct/nite/daytacct

/var/adm/acct/nite/lock

/var/adm/acct/nite/lock1

/var/adm/acct/nite/lastdate

/var/adm/acct/nite/statefile

See attributes(5) for descriptions of the following attributes:

acctcom(1), mail(1), acct(1M), acctcms(1M), acctcon(1M), acctmerg(1M), acctprc(1M), acctsh(1M), cron(1M), fwtmp(1M), acct(2), acct(3HEAD), utmpx(4), attributes(5)

It is not recommended to restart runacct in the SETUP state. Run SETUP manually and restart using:

runacct mmdd WTMPFIX

If runacct failed in the PROCESS state, remove the last ptacct file because it will not be complete.

The runacct command can process a maximum of

• 6000 distinct sessions
• 1000 distinct terminal lines
• 2000 distinct login names

during a single invocation of the command. If at some point the actual number of any one of these items exceeds the maximum, the command will not succeed.

Do not invoke runacct at the same time as ckpacct, as there may be a conflict if both scripts attempt to execute turnacct switch simultaneously.