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System Management Guide: Operating System and Devices

Summarizing Accounting Records

To summarize raw accounting data, use the sa command. This command reads the raw accounting data, usually collected in the /var/adm/pacct file, and the current usage summary data in the /var/adm/savacct file, if summary data exists. It combines this information into a new usage summary report and purges the raw data file to make room for further data collection.

Prerequisites

The sa command requires an input file of raw accounting data such as the pacct file (process accounting file). To collect raw accounting data, you must have an accounting system set up and running. See "Setting Up an Accounting System" for guidelines

Procedure

The purpose of the sa command is to summarize process accounting information and to display or store that information. The simplest use of the command displays a list of statistics about every process that has run during the life of the pacct file being read. To produce such a list, enter:

/usr/sbin/sa 

To summarize the accounting information and merge it into the summary file, enter:

/usr/sbin/sa -s

The sa command offers many additional flags that specify how the accounting information is processed and displayed. See the sa command description for more information.


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