Process (System) Accounting

IRIX provides utilities to log certain types of system activity. These utilities perform process accounting.

The IRIX process accounting system can provide the following information:

Using this information, you can:

Determine how system resources are used and if a particular user is using more than a reasonable share.
Trace significant system events, such as security breaches, by examining the list of all processes invoked by a particular user at a particular time.
Set up billing systems to charge login accounts for using system resources.

The next sections describe the parts of process accounting, how to turn on and off process accounting, and how to look at the various log files.