sa: user accounting initialization failed - FreeBSD 7-stable

[George Fazio]

Lowell Gilbert wrote:
> George Fazio <gfazio at n3gqf.us> writes:
>
>   
>> I'm seeing errors from sa in my daily run output.  I read the man page
>> for sa(8) and some of the commands that were referenced under the see
>> also section.  I'm completely lost.  Could anyone point me in the
>> right direction?
>>
>> Here is a snippet of the output from the daily run output
>>
>> Rotating accounting logs and gathering statistics:
>> sa: converting user accounting stats: Inappropriate file type or format
>> sa: user accounting initialization failed
>>     
>
> Are you intending to use the system accounting functionality?  If not,
> you probably don't need the files in /var/account at all (by default,
> there wouldn't be any).
>   
I probably turned them by accident on while hastily going through the 
install.  My (home) mail server had been down for nearly a week waiting 
for new hardware to arrive, and I probably was not paying quite as much 
attention as I should have been with the base install.  While I do not 
need the accounting feature, I was hoping to understand why it is not 
working to broaden my understanding of how the system functions.  I 
guess I will do some more reading and just disable it if I cannot figure 
it out.

Thanks for the reply,
George