NAME | SYNOPSIS | DESCRIPTION | OPTIONS | FILES | AUTHOR | SEE ALSO | COLOPHON

AC(1)                      General Commands Manual                     AC(1)

NAME         top

       ac -  print statistics about users' connect time

SYNOPSIS         top

       ac     [ -d | --daily-totals ] [ -y | --print-year ]
              [ -p | --individual-totals ] [ people ]
              [ -f | --file filename ] [ -a | --all-days ]
              [ --complain ] [ --reboots ] [ --supplants ]
              [ --timewarps ] [ --compatibility ]
              [ --tw-leniency num ] [ --tw-suspicious num ]
              [ -z | --print-zeros ] [ --debug ]
              [ -V | --version ] [ -h | --help ]

DESCRIPTION         top

       ac prints out a report of connect time (in hours) based on the
       logins/logouts in the current wtmp file.  A total is also printed
       out.
       The accounting file wtmp is maintained by init(8) and login(1).
       Neither ac nor login creates the wtmp if it doesn't exist, no
       accounting is done.  To begin accounting, create the file with a
       length of zero.
       NOTE:  The wtmp file can get really big, really fast.  You might want
       to trim it every once and a while.
       GNU ac works nearly the same UNIX ac, though it's a little smarter in
       several ways.  You should therefore expect differences in the output
       of GNU ac and the output of ac's on other systems.  Use the command
       info accounting to get additional information.

OPTIONS         top

       -d, --daily-totals
              Print totals for each day rather than just one big total at
              the end.  The output looks like this:
                      Jul  3  total     1.17
                      Jul  4  total     2.10
                      Jul  5  total     8.23
                      Jul  6  total     2.10
                      Jul  7  total     0.30
       -p, --individual-totals
              Print time totals for each user in addition to the usual
              everything-lumped-into-one value.  It looks like:
                      bob       8.06
                      goff      0.60
                      maley     7.37
                      root      0.12
                      total    16.15
       people Print out the sum total of the connect time used by all of the
              users included in people.  Note that people is a space
              separated list of valid user names; wildcards are not allowed.
       -f, --file filename
              Read from the file filename instead of the system's wtmp file.
       --complain
              When the wtmp file has a problem (a time-warp, missing record,
              or whatever), print out an appropriate error.
       --reboots
              Reboot records are NOT written at the time of a reboot, but
              when the system restarts; therefore, it is impossible to know
              exactly when the reboot occurred.  Users may have been logged
              into the system at the time of the reboot, and many ac's
              automatically count the time between the login and the reboot
              record against the user (even though all of that time
              shouldn't be, perhaps, if the system is down for a long time,
              for instance).  If you want to count this time, include the
              flag.  *For vanilla ac compatibility, include this flag.*
       --supplants
              Sometimes, a logout record is not written for a specific
              terminal, so the time that the last user accrued cannot be
              calculated.  If you want to include the time from the user's
              login to the next login on the terminal (though probably
              incorrect), include this you want to include the time from the
              user's login to the next login on the terminal (though
              probably incorrect), include this flag.  *For vanilla ac
              compatibility, include this flag.*
       --timewarps
              Sometimes, entries in a wtmp file will suddenly jump back into
              the past without a clock change record occurring.  It is
              impossible to know how long a user was logged in when this
              occurs.  If you want to count the time between the login and
              the time warp against the user, include this flag.  *For
              vanilla ac compatibility, include this flag.*
       --compatibility
              This is shorthand for typing out the three above options.
       -a, --all-days
              If we're printing daily totals, print a record for every day
              instead of skipping intervening days where there is no login
              activity.  Without this flag, time accrued during those
              intervening days gets listed under the next day where there is
              login activity.
       --tw-leniency num
              Set the time warp leniency to num seconds.  Records in wtmp
              files might be slightly out of order (most notably when two
              logins occur within a one-second period - the second one gets
              written first).  By default, this value is set to 60.  If the
              program notices this problem, time is not assigned to users
              unless the --timewarps flag is used.
       --tw-suspicious num
              Set the time warp suspicious value to num seconds.  If two
              records in the wtmp file are farther than this number of
              seconds apart, there is a problem with the wtmp file (or your
              machine hasn't been used in a year).  If the program notices
              this problem, time is not assigned to users unless the
              --timewarps flag is used.
       -y, --print-year
              Print year when displaying dates.
       -z, --print-zeros
              If a total for any category (save the grand total) is zero,
              print it.  The default is to suppress printing.
       --debug
              Print verbose internal information.
       -V, --version
              Print the version number of ac to standard output and quit.
       -h, --help
              Prints the usage string and default locations of system files
              to standard output and exits.

FILES         top

       wtmp
              The system wide login record file. See wtmp(5) for further
              details.

AUTHOR         top

       The GNU accounting utilities were written by Noel Cragg
       <noel@gnu.ai.mit.edu>. The man page was adapted from the accounting
       texinfo page by Susan Kleinmann <sgk@sgk.tiac.net>.

SEE ALSO         top

       login(1), wtmp(5), init(8), sa(8)

COLOPHON         top

       This page is part of the psacct (process accounting utilities)
       project.  Information about the project can be found at 
       ⟨http://www.gnu.org/software/acct/⟩.  If you have a bug report for
       this manual page, see ⟨http://www.gnu.org/software/acct/⟩.  This page
       was obtained from the project's upstream Subversion repository 
       ⟨svn://svn.savannah.gnu.org/acct/trunk⟩ on 2017-07-05.  If you dis‐
       cover any rendering problems in this HTML version of the page, or you
       believe there is a better or more up-to-date source for the page, or
       you have corrections or improvements to the information in this
       COLOPHON (which is not part of the original manual page), send a mail
       to man-pages@man7.org
                               2010 August 16                          AC(1)

Pages that refer to this page: utmp(5)accton(8)sa(8)