Resource Management

Accounting

Who ran what, when, and how much resource was used?

Many processes have very short life spans. You cannot see such processes with ps, but they may be so frequent that they dominate the load on your system. The only way to catch them is to have the system keep a record of every process that has run, who ran it, what it was, when it started and ended, and how much resource it used. The answers come from the system accounting subsystem. While you may have some concerns about accounting because of the “big brother is watching you” connotation or the cost of additional overhead, the information is important and valuable. The overhead of collecting accounting data is always present but is insignificant. When you turn on accounting, you are ...