AC(8)

📦
version 1042.100.6.0.1 · 2 versions
, in nixpkgs unstable

💖 AC(8) — connect time accounting 💖

okay bestie, so this is ac, section 8 of the System Manager's Manual, and she is literally the queen of connect time accounting. no cap. let's get into it 🎀

✨ NAME ✨

ac — connect time accounting 🌸

✨ SYNOPSIS ✨

ac [-dp] [-t tty] [-w wtmp] [users ...]

✨ DESCRIPTION ✨

so here's the vibe: by default, a record of individual login and logout times gets written down by login(1) and init(8) respectively, and they send it to syslogd(8). 📝

then ac slides in, examines those records, and writes the accumulated connect time — in hours — for all logins to the standard output. that's it. that's the whole job. slay 💅

🌈 the options, bestie

  • -d — display the connect times in 24 hour chunks. like, day-by-day energy ⏰
  • -p — print individual users' totals. so you get per-person receipts instead of one big number 🧾✨
  • -t tty — only do accounting logins on certain ttys. and okay this one is the fun one: the tty spec can start with ! to mean not this tty, and can end with * to mean all similarly named ttys. and yes you can stack multiple -t flags, go off 👑
  • -w wtmp — read connect time data from wtmp instead of the default, which is reading from log(1). switch up your source, why not 🦋
  • users ... — display totals for the given individuals only. just the besties you asked for, nobody else 🙈
and if no arguments are given at all? ac displays the total connect time for all accounts with login sessions recorded in log(1). the whole group chat, basically 💜

✨ FILES ✨

  • /var/run/utmpx — the connect time accounting file 🗂️

✨ EXIT STATUS ✨

ac exits 0 on success, and >0 if an error occurs. clean exits only, fr fr ✨

✨ EXAMPLES ✨

okay so picture this: you want times recorded in modems to be charged out at a different rate than the other ones. iconic. do this:

ac -p -t "ttyd*" > modems
ac -p -t "!ttyd*" > other

two files, two rates, zero stress 🫶

✨ SEE ALSO ✨

log(1), login(1), getutxent(3), utmpx(5), launchd(8), sa(8), syslogd(8) 🔥

✨ HISTORY ✨

an ac command appeared in Version 5 AT&T UNIX. and this version of ac was written for NetBSD 0.9A, from the specification provided by various systems' manual pages. main character origin story honestly 👑

💖 and that's the whole page! this one's the Debian build, dated February 14, 2020 — happy valentine's day to connect time accounting and to you, bestie 💖

📦 where this page comes from