| .\" Copyright 1992, 1993 Rickard E. Faith (faith@cs.unc.edu) |
| .\" May be distributed under the GNU General Public License |
| .TH SYNC 8 "20 November 1993" "Linux 0.99" "Linux Programmer's Manual" |
| .SH NAME |
| sync \- flush Linux filesystem buffers |
| .SH SYNOPSIS |
| .B sync |
| .SH DESCRIPTION |
| .B sync |
| executes |
| .BR sync (2), |
| which flushes the filesystem buffers to disk. |
| .B sync |
| should be called before the processor 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 |
| .BR reboot "(8), or " halt (8) |
| commands, which will attempt to put the system in a quiescent state before |
| calling |
| .BR sync (2). |
| |
| From Linus: "Note that |
| .B 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 |
| .B sync |
| with the expectation of killing the machine soon after, please take this |
| into account and sleep for a few seconds. [The |
| .BR reboot (8) |
| command takes these precautions.] |
| .SH "SEE ALSO" |
| .BR sync (2), |
| .BR update (8), |
| .BR reboot (8), |
| .BR halt (8) |
| .SH AUTHOR |
| Linus Torvalds (torvalds@cs.helsinki.fi) |
