On 03/10/2014 12:10 PM, Christoph Hellwig wrote: > On Mon, Mar 10, 2014 at 01:03:41PM +0100, Michael Kerrisk (man-pages) wrote: >> The kernel keeps data in memory to avoid doing (relatively >> slow) disk reads and writes. This improves performance, but if >> the computer crashes, data may be lost or the file system cor??? >> rupted as a result. sync ensures that everything in memory is >> written to disk. > > This part looks correct.
Yes, and it's already in the info pages: http://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/manual/coreutils.html#sync-invocation Generally we keep the man pages to a minimum, stating the interface and brief description. Users are prompted to run info coreutils 'sync invocation' for further discussion, where they'll see the above text. > >> sync should be called before the processor is halted in an >> unusual manner (e.g., before causing a kernel panic when debug??? >> ging new kernel code). In general, the processor should be >> halted using the shutdown(8) or reboot(8) or halt(8) commands, >> which will attempt to put the system in a quiescent state >> before calling sync(2). (Various implementations of these com??? >> mands exist; consult your documentation; on some systems one >> should not call reboot(8) and halt(8) directly.) > > This kind of information does not seem useful for a user of a command > line utility, and the last bit seems incorrect at least for Linux. I agree. thanks, Pádraig.
