extacct man page on IRIX

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extacct(5)							    extacct(5)

NAME
     extacct - introduction to IRIX extended accounting features

DESCRIPTION
     The accounting done by IRIX has traditionally been process oriented: a
     new accounting record is produced for each process that has been run,
     containing statistics about the resources used by that individual
     process.  Although this is fine for sites with average workloads, it can
     be too grainy for sites that have large amounts of traffic, with the
     result that the accounting files quickly become too large and
     unmanageable.  Since accounting is typically employed to charge
     individual projects or departments for overall resource utilization, it
     would often be sufficient to simply summarize the resource usage of an
     entire login session or batch job.	 This could cut down significantly on
     the amount of disk space required for accounting data.  Therefore, IRIX
     provides a feature to perform accounting by array session, in which each
     accounting record that is written contains the accumulated statistics for
     all of the processes that were part of that array session.	 This is in
     addition to process-level accounting, not in place of it; the two
     accounting modes are separately controlled so it is possible to have
     either, both, or neither style of accounting enabled.

     The data that is collected and reported for array sessions is a superset
     of the data that is reported by the traditional process accounting
     facility.	In particular, the following items are reported for array
     sessions but not reported by traditional process accounting:

     *	Array session handle (see array_sessions(5))
     *	Service provider information (see array_sessions(5))
     *	Project ID (see projects(5))
     *	Number of swaps
     *	Number of bytes read, number of bytes written (separately)
     *	Number of read requests, number of write requests
     *	Time spent waiting for block I/O
     *	Time spent waiting for raw I/O
     *	Time spent waiting on the run queue

     Some of this information would also be useful for sites that otherwise
     make use of process accounting.  Therefore, a second type of process
     accounting, "extended process accounting", is provided by IRIX.  Again,
     it is controlled separately from session accounting or traditional
     process accounting.

     IRIX writes session and extended process accounting data using the System
     Audit Trail (SAT) facility.  This is different from traditional process
     accounting, which typically writes its data to the file /var/adm/pacct.
     Audit data is collected directly from the kernel by the satd(1M) program,
     then either written directly to files or else passed on to other filters
     or postprocessing programs.  To include accounting records in the audit
     data, it is necessary to enable the audit events sat_proc_acct (for
     extended process accounting records) and/or sat_session_acct (for session
     accounting records).  This can be done using the satconfig(1M) or

									Page 1

extacct(5)							    extacct(5)

     sat_select(1M) commands.  If the audit facility is not being used for any
     purpose other than accounting, no other events need to be enabled.	 For
     more information on configuring the audit facility, see the IRIX Admin:
     Backup, Security, and Accounting guide.

     Session accounting records can be written in two formats, differing only
     in the treatment of service provider information.	In IRIX 6.4 and
     earlier, the service provider information for an array session was always
     exactly 64 bytes in length, while starting with IRIX 6.5 it could
     potentially vary from 0 to 1024 bytes in length.  In "session accounting
     format 1" (the system default, and the format supported in IRIX 6.4 and
     earlier), exactly 64 bytes of service provider information will be
     reported for each array session.  If in fact the array session has fewer
     than 64 bytes of service provider information associated with it, then it
     will be padded at the end with zeroes.  Likewise, if it has more than 64
     bytes of service provider information, the 65th and subsequent bytes will
     be truncated.  In "session accounting format 2", the exact number of
     bytes of service provider information associated with the array session
     will be reported, along with a field specifying this length.  In this
     case, it is possible for session accounting records to have varying
     lengths, but there will be no loss of data.  The session accounting
     format can be changed dynamically by the superuser using the arsctl(2)
     system call or the xactl(1M) program.  It can also be set for boot time
     be changing the kernel variable sessaf using the systune(1M) program.

     Note that the utility programs for traditional SVR4 process accounting
     (for example, acctcms, acctmerg, and turnacct) do not function with the
     extended process accounting or session accounting data.  It is possible
     to convert extended accounting data into the SVR4 format (see the
     acctcvt(1) program for details), but the metrics that are unique to
     extended accounting will be lost.	Software to process unmodified
     extended accounting data is available from independent software vendors.
     The format of the audit data files themselves are described in the system
     header files sys/sat.h and sys/extacct.h.

     Like any accounting or monitoring package, the extended process
     accounting and session accounting features do contribute to overall
     system overhead.  For this reason, they are disabled in the kernel by
     default.  To enable these features, use the systune(1M) program to modify
     either or both of these variables:

     do_sessacct   Enables session accounting if non-zero

     do_extpacct   Enables extended process accounting if non-zero

INSTALLATION SUMMARY
     The following steps are required to set up session or extended process
     accounting:

     *	Enable session and/or extended process accounting in the kernel by
	using the systune(1M) utility to set the do_sessacct and/or
	do_extpacct parameters to non-zero values.

									Page 2

extacct(5)							    extacct(5)

     *	Use the inst(1M) utility to install the eoe.sw.audit subsystem from
	your IRIX distribution media.  This will add the special components
	required for the system audit trail facility to your system.  It will
	be necessary to reboot the system after completing this step.

     *	Enable the audit facility in general by using the chkconfig(1M)
	utility as follows:

	     chkconfig audit on

     *	Use the satconfig program to enable the sat_proc_acct and/or
	sat_session_acct audit events.	If the audit facility is being used
	only for accounting purposes, all other events can be turned off to
	conserve disk space.

NOTES
     The format of the data stream generated by the System Audit Trail
     facility changed between IRIX 6.2 and IRIX 6.4, then again between IRIX
     6.4 and IRIX 6.5.	Therefore, software that was designed to read
     accounting data from one of those earlier IRIX releases may not work with
     more recent IRIX releases (and vice versa).  To help address this
     situation, the acctcvt(1) program can be used to convert data files or
     even the audit data stream (when used as a filter) from one format to
     another.

SEE ALSO
     acctcvt(1), audit(1M), sat_select(1M), satconfig(1M), satd(1M),
     systune(1M), xactl(1M), arsctl(2), arsop(2), array_sessions(5),
     audit_filters(5), projects(5).

     IRIX Admin: Backup, Security, and Accounting

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