sync
Hurricane Electric Internet Services
NAME
sync - flush Linux filesystem buffers
SYNOPSIS
sync
DESCRIPTION
sync executes sync(2), which flushes the filesystem
buffers to disk. sync should be called before the proces-
sor is halted in an unusual manner (i.e., before causing a
kernel panic when debugging new kernel code). In general,
the processor should be halted using the reboot(8), or
halt(8) commands, which will attempt to put the system in
a quiescent state before calling sync(2).
From Linus: "Note that sync is only guaranteed to schedule
the dirty blocks for writing: it can actually take a short
time before all the blocks are finally written. If you
are doing the sync with the expectation of killing the
machine soon after, please take this into account and
sleep for a few seconds. [The reboot(8) command takes
these precautions.]
SEE ALSO
sync(2), update(8), reboot(8), halt(8)
AUTHOR
Linus Torvalds (torvalds@cs.helsinki.fi)
Hurricane Electric Internet Services
Copyright (C) 1998
Hurricane Electric.
All Rights Reserved.