sync(2) System Calls Manual sync(2)
NAME
sync, syncfs - commit filesystem caches to disk
LIBRARY
Standard C library (libc, -lc)
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 <= 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 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 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 re-
lated to the filesystem itself.
ENOSPC Disk space was exhausted while synchronizing.
ENOSPC
EDQUOT Data was written to a file 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
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.
STANDARDS
sync() POSIX.1-2008.
syncfs()
Linux.
HISTORY
sync() POSIX.1-2001, SVr4, 4.3BSD.
syncfs()
Linux 2.6.39, glibc 2.14.
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.
In mainline kernel versions prior to Linux 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 Linux 1.3.20, Linux did not wait for I/O to complete before re-
turning.
SEE ALSO
sync(1), fdatasync(2), fsync(2)
Linux man-pages 6.9.1 2024-05-02 sync(2)
Generated by dwww version 1.16 on Tue Dec 16 04:15:49 CET 2025.