man-pages/man2/fsync.2

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.\" Hey Emacs! This file is -*- nroff -*- source.
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.\" Copyright 1993 Rickard E. Faith (faith@cs.unc.edu)
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.\" Modified 21 Aug 1994 by Michael Chastain <mec@shell.portal.com>:
.\" Removed note about old libc (pre-4.5.26) translating to 'sync'.
.\" Modified 15 Apr 1995 by Michael Chastain <mec@shell.portal.com>:
.\" Added `see also' section.
.\" Modified 13 Apr 1996 by Markus Kuhn <mskuhn@cip.informatik.uni-erlangen.de>
.\" Added remarks about fdatasync.
.\" Modified 31 Jan 1997 by Eric S. Raymond <esr@thyrsus.com>
.\" Modified 18 Apr 2001 by Andi Kleen
.\" Fix description to describe what it really does; add a few caveats.
.\"
.TH FSYNC 2 2001-04-18 "Linux 1.3.85" "Linux Programmer's Manual"
.SH NAME
fsync, fdatasync \- synchronize a file's complete in-core state with that on disk
.SH SYNOPSIS
.B #include <unistd.h>
.sp
.BI "int fsync(int " fd );
.sp
.BI "int fdatasync(int " fd );
.SH DESCRIPTION
.B fsync
copies all in-core parts of a file to disk, and waits until the
device reports that all parts are on stable storage.
It also updates metadata stat information. It does not necessarily ensure
that the entry in the directory containing the file has also reached disk.
For that an explicit
.B fsync
on the file descriptor of the directory is also needed.
.B fdatasync
does the same as
.B fsync
but only flushes user data, not the meta data like the st_atime or
st_mtime
(respectively, time of last access and
time of last modification; see
.BR stat (2)) .
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.SH "RETURN VALUE"
On success, zero is returned. On error, \-1 is returned, and
.I errno
is set appropriately.
.SH ERRORS
.TP
.B EBADF
.I fd
is not a valid file descriptor open for writing.
.TP
.B EIO
An error occurred during synchronization.
.TP
.BR EROFS ", " EINVAL
.I fd
is bound to a special file which does not support synchronization.
.SH NOTES
In case the hard disk has write cache enabled,
the data may not really be on permanent storage when
.BR fsync / fdatasync
return.
.\" See
.\" .BR hdparm (8)
.\" for how to disable that cache for IDE disks.
.LP
When an ext2 file system is mounted with the
.I sync
option, directory entries are also implicitly synced by
.BR fsync .
.LP
On kernels before 2.4,
.B fsync
on big files can be inefficient.
An alternative might be to use the
.I O_SYNC
flag to
.BR open (2).
.SH "CONFORMING TO"
POSIX.1b (formerly POSIX.4)
.SH "SEE ALSO"
.BR bdflush (2),
.BR open (2),
.BR sync (2),
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.BR mount (8),
.BR sync (8),
.BR update (8)