Invoking Unix commands from a Python app

[Martin Blume]

"Rob Cowie" schrieb
> Excellent... just the thing I was looking for. Thanks.
> 
> Does anyone know of a unix app that could be used to
> monitor the duration of processes etc.? 
> 
man -k account showed me (among others):
acct (2)             - switch process accounting on or off
acct (5)             - execution accounting file

a short program to start accounting:
(warning: just hacked together)

smail:/home/mblume/wrk/tmp # cat acct.c
#include <sys/types.h>
#include <sys/stat.h>
#include <unistd.h>
#include <errno.h>


int main(int argc, char *argv[])
{
        char            *pf;
        struct stat     st_buf;

        if (strcmp(argv[1], "NULL") == 0)
        {
                pf = NULL;
                printf("turning accounting off\n");
        } // turn accounting off
        else if (stat(argv[1], &st_buf) == -1)
        {
                printf("stat %s failed, error %d=%s\n",
                        argv[1], errno, strerror(errno));
                return 1;
        } // stat failed
        else
        {
                // TBD check for a regular file
                pf = argv[1];
                printf("acct for %s\n", pf);
        } // file seems ok

        if (acct(pf) == -1)
        {
                printf("acct failed %d=%s\n", 
                    errno, strerror(errno));
        } // oops, acct failed

        return 0;

} // main


HTH
Martin