Why Overlooking /etc/acct/holidays Is a Bad Idea

The /etc/acct/holidays file serves two purposes: it defines the prime time for the current year, and it lists all the holidays. In case you're wondering why all of the holidays are listed, that is because holidays are expected to be non-prime time for the whole day.

At this point, you may say you're activating accounting only for security purposes and not going to bill anyone, so why should you care about this file? Well, I strongly advise you to care. I have experienced some weird problems that kept accounting from working, and after some research I found that an error in the holidays file was preventing the reports from being produced correctly. Worse still, the error messages I got were misleading to say the least, and it took me a lot of time and effort to find the solution. Beware!