I don't know if this is common knowledge but here it is anyway:
If you are running process accounting on a Digital UNIX system you might be
temped to just uncomment the default entries for runacct, ckpacct och monacct
in user adm's crontab. This might get you into trouble...
If your system runs a lot of processes the file /var/adm/pacct might
grow very quickly. If you're running ckpacct from crontab it splits the pacct
file into several files. If the number of pacct files grows beyond nine in a
day you have a problem!
Days when you get more than nine pacct files you're accounting summary will be
empty! The problem is caused by runacct which calls acctmerg with names of
pacct files as arguments. acctmerg cannot handle more than nine arguments!
The problem is easily solved either by disabling ckpacct in the crontab or by
giving it a higher limit for when the pacct file should be split. It takes
the number of blocks as it's first argument, the default is 500.
I think Digital should change the default crontab extry. Todays fast systems
can create enormous amounts of accounting information which will trigger this
problem.
/Mats
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Mats G Karlsson E-mail: atomaka_at_ato.abb.se (__)
ABB Atom AB (oo)
Avd: AUP Tel: +46 (0)21 347762 \/-------\
S-721 63 Vasteras Fax: +46 (0)21 347088 || | \
Sweden ||---W|| *
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Received on Tue Oct 08 1996 - 15:03:20 NZDT