*BSD News Article 95725


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From: j@uriah.heep.sax.de (J Wunsch)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc
Subject: Re: Q: Is there something wrong with the 'ac' command
Date: 19 May 1997 09:44:40 GMT
Organization: Private BSD site, Dresden
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Sonya and Jeffrey Metcalf <metcalf@XXsnet.net> wrote:

> I was recently experimenting with the FreeBSD accounting capabilities
> and was attempting to use the 'ac' command.  From the manual page
> I see that 'ac' reads from the 'wtmp' file in the var directory
> (sorry I don't recall the default path).  The file is nonempty and
> from looking at it from a binary editor, I can see that it contains
> the type of information that ac is supposed to give.  However whenever
> I use that 'ac' command (as a regular user or as root), all I ever get
> is
> 
> Total  0.00

j@uriah 155% ac
        total             1001.49

The normal tools to examine the utmp file are who(1), and w(1).  The
regular tool to examine wtmp is last(1).

ac(8) is a fairly complex accounting command, and you need to RTFM
well in order to use it the way you actually intend.  The default
display is a little silly:

     If no arguments are given, ac displays the total connect time for all ac-
     counts with login sessions recorded in wtmp.

-- 
cheers, J"org

joerg_wunsch@uriah.heep.sax.de -- http://www.sax.de/~joerg/ -- NIC: JW11-RIPE
Never trust an operating system you don't have sources for. ;-)