sync

NAME
       sync, syncfs - commit filesystem caches to disk

SYNOPSIS
       #include <unistd.h> 

       void sync(void);
       int syncfs(int fd);

DESCRIPTION
       sync()  causes  all  pending  modifications to file system metadata and  cached file data to be written to the underlying filesystems.

       syncfs() is like sync(), but synchronizes just the filesystem  containing file referred to by the open file descriptor fd.

RETURN VALUE
       syncfs()  returns  0 on success; on error, it returns -1 and sets errno  to indicate the error.

ERRORS
       sync() is always successful.
       syncfs() can fail for at least the following reason:
       EBADF  fd is not a valid file descriptor.

VERSIONS
       syncfs() first appeared in Linux 2.6.39; library support was  added  to  glibc in version 2.14.

CONFORMING TO
       sync(): POSIX.1-2001, POSIX.1-2008, SVr4, 4.3BSD.
       syncfs() is Linux-specific.

NOTES
        According  to  the  standard specification (e.g., POSIX.1-2001), sync() schedules the writes, but may return before the actual writing is done. However  Linux  waits  for I/O completions, and thus sync() or syncfs() provide the same guarantees as fsync called on every file in the system or filesystem respectively.

BUGS

       Before  version  1.3.20  Linux  did not wait for I/O to complete before returning.