SYNC(2) Linux Programmer's Manual SYNC(2)
NAME
sync, syncfs - commit filesystem caches to disk
SYNOPSIS
#include <unistd.h>
void sync(void);
int syncfs(int fd);
Feature Test Macro Requirements for glibc (see feature_test_macros(7)):
sync():
_XOPEN_SOURCE >= 500
|| /* Since glibc 2.19: */ _DEFAULT_SOURCE
|| /* Glibc versions <= 2.19: */ _BSD_SOURCE
syncfs():
_GNU_SOURCE
DESCRIPTION
sync() causes all pending modifications to filesystem metadata and
cached file data to be written to the underlying filesystems.
syncfs() is like sync(), but synchronizes just the filesystem contain-
ing 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 reasons:
EBADF fd is not a valid file descriptor.
EIO An error occurred during synchronization. This error may relate
to data written to any file on the filesystem, or on metadata
related to the filesystem itself.
ENOSPC Disk space was exhausted while synchronizing.
ENOSPC, EDQUOT
Data was written to a files on NFS or another filesystem which
does not allocate space at the time of a write(2) system call,
and some previous write failed due to insufficient storage
space.
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
Since glibc 2.2.2, the Linux prototype for sync() is as listed above,
following the various standards. In glibc 2.2.1 and earlier, it was
"int sync(void)", and sync() always returned 0.
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 sys-
tem or filesystem respectively.
In mainline kernel versions prior to 5.8, syncfs() will fail only when
passed a bad file descriptor (EBADF). Since Linux 5.8, syncfs() will
also report an error if one or more inodes failed to be written back
since the last syncfs() call.
BUGS
Before version 1.3.20 Linux did not wait for I/O to complete before re-
turning.
SEE ALSO
sync(1), fdatasync(2), fsync(2)
COLOPHON
This page is part of release 5.10 of the Linux man-pages project. A
description of the project, information about reporting bugs, and the
latest version of this page, can be found at
https://www.kernel.org/doc/man-pages/.
Linux 2020-08-13 SYNC(2)
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