What is acct or pacct file and how to view them

acct file format is common in UNIX / Linux / BSD operating systems

kernel will start the process accounting and stores in a file which the system wide unix process accounting or unix accounting file for UNIX / Linux like operating systems

Where are the accounting files

FreeBSD / OpenBSD default accounting file: /var/account/acct
Red Hat / RHEL / CentOS / Fedora Linux : /var/account/pacct
Debian / Ubuntu Linux : /var/log/account/pacct
Sun Solaris UNIX default accounting file : /var/adm/pacct

To view the contents of the acct file

Solaris

# acctcom /var/adm/pacct.n

where pacct.n is the accounting file you want to view

Sample output

-bash-3.2# acctcom pacct.8 | more

ACCOUNTING RECORDS FROM: Thu Apr 24 22:37:36 2014
COMMAND                           START    END          REAL     CPU    MEAN
NAME       USER     TTYNAME       TIME     TIME       (SECS) (SECS) SIZE(K)
#accton    root      ?            22:37:36 22:37:36     0.04    0.01 988.00
sh         root      ?            22:37:36 22:37:36     0.04    0.01 1172.00
#logadm    root      ?            22:37:36 22:37:36     0.40    0.01 2192.00
turnacct   root      ?            22:37:36 22:37:36     0.40    0.01 992.00
rm         root      ?            22:37:37 22:37:37     0.01    0.01 1012.00
rm         root      ?            22:37:37 22:37:37     0.01    0.01 1012.00
rm         root      ?            22:37:37 22:37:37     0.01    0.01 1012.00
startup    root      ?            22:37:36 22:37:36     0.43    0.01 1020.00
sh         root      ?            22:37:36 22:37:36     0.43    0.01 1336.00
...

References

[1] docs.oracle.com/cd/E19253-01/817-0403/6mg741bv8/index.html

[2] www.cyberciti.biz/faq/linux-unix-bsd-varaccountpacct-or-varlogaccountpacct-file