How can I record the running time of particular commands in Linux (specifically bash)?

Question

I'm trying to collect some stats on how much time is spent 'waiting' for certain fairly short running tasks so I can justify purchase of some automated tools. I've written bash function wrappers around a few common tasks I do using the GNU time utility along the lines of this:

function something() {
  /usr/bin/time -o ~/wastedtime.log -a $path_to_original "$@"
}

I would now like to extend this a little further to a few more scripts & if possible catch the timings for other users on the same machine. I'm using a bash to syslog patch already.

What utilities exist to automatically record the execution times of commands & their arguments?

Answer 1

Sounds like you want the GNU Accounting Utilities, specifically the "sa" command.