🚀 go-pugleaf

In <5453@mccuts.uts.mcc.ac.uk> zzassgl@uts.mcc.ac.uk (Geoff Lane) writes:

>Against my better wishes I have to implement a `project' based accounting
>system on top of the standard AT&T Unix process accounting.  Projects are
>represented by arbitary eight character text strings (which could be mapped
>to small integers in the implementation) and each process that executes has
>to be associated with one such string.  Projects can have one or more users
>and each user can be a member of one or more projects (but only one project
>at a time.) Users have to be able to change projects at any point with a
>command and all subsequent processes executed in the same login session
>have to be associated with the new project. 

>I don't really want to modify the Unix kernel unless it is absolutely
>necessary.

It appears that all that is necessary is for you to write
new (additional) analysis programs for the collected data
(pacct* files), and to record the date-time when each user
switches projects, via a short set[ug]id program.

Users can then switch between project within the same login
session, simply by executing the project-switch command.

The structure of the pacct files is well documented and it
looks easy enough to do a project-by-project analysis by
correlating the user-project switch times with process
accounting information. You can poke your project reporting
stuff into the existing scripts which initiate periodic
process accounting; daily/monthly/annually.

I'll leave the options/extensions up to you as an exercise. :-)
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