On Mon, Mar 10, 2014 at 1:34 PM, Pádraig Brady <P@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > 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. Right then. The man-pages project just shrank by one page. Thanks for your input, Pádraig. Cheers, Michael -- Michael Kerrisk Linux man-pages maintainer; http://www.kernel.org/doc/man-pages/ Linux/UNIX System Programming Training: http://man7.org/training/ -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-man" in the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
