Accounting for users' time

[Margaret Doll]

We need to charge our users for their time on certain of our systems 
and don't have the money to buy commercial software.

We are trying to use the basic accounting system that is already 
available on RedHat systems.
A few of the systems on which we need accounting are at  2.4.18-26.7.x; 
we are upgrading them to
2.4.21-27.0.4.EL

Why does the output from the ac program not agree with the output from 
the last command for a specific user?

We want only to charge the person for a login session at the console, 
from login to logout.  Is there a way to pick out those times from jobs 
that the user might have left running in the background or jobs that 
he/she starts remotely?


[root at x log]# ac -p -f user1mp.1 | grep user1
         user1                                   0.71


[root at x log]# last -f user1mp.1 | grep user1
user1       pts/1                         Thu Apr 28 17:34 - 20:39  
(03:05)
user1       pts/0                         Thu Apr 28 17:34 - 17:41  
(00:07)
user1       pts/1                         Thu Apr 21 14:45 - 15:27  
(00:42)
user1       pts/0                         Thu Apr 21 14:45 - 14:53  
(00:08)
user1       pts/1                         Tue Apr 19 17:28 - 18:53  
(01:24)
user1       pts/0                         Tue Apr 19 17:28 - 17:35  
(00:07)
user1       pts/2                         Tue Apr  5 18:42 - 19:31  
(00:48)
user1       pts/0                         Tue Apr  5 18:42 - 18:47  
(00:05)
user1       pts/2                         Tue Apr  5 18:16 - 18:42  
(00:25)
user1       pts/0                         Tue Apr  5 18:16 - 18:22  
(00:06)
user1       pts/2                         Tue Apr  5 09:35 - 11:03  
(01:27)
user1       pts/0                         Tue Apr  5 09:35 - 09:42  
(00:07)
user1mp.1 begins Fri Apr  1 08:14:21 2005
[root at x log]# last -f user1mp.1 | grep user1 | grep "ps/0"
[root at x log]# last -f user1mp.1 | grep user1 | grep "pts/0"
user1       pts/0                         Thu Apr 28 17:34 - 17:41  
(00:07)
user1       pts/0                         Thu Apr 21 14:45 - 14:53  
(00:08)
user1       pts/0                         Tue Apr 19 17:28 - 17:35  
(00:07)
user1       pts/0                         Tue Apr  5 18:42 - 18:47  
(00:05)
user1       pts/0                         Tue Apr  5 18:16 - 18:22  
(00:06)
user1       pts/0                         Tue Apr  5 09:35 - 09:42  
(00:07)