NetBSD/lib/libc/sys/fsync.2

.\"	$NetBSD: fsync.2,v 1.15 2003/11/18 08:49:18 wiz Exp $
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.\"     @(#)fsync.2	8.1 (Berkeley) 6/4/93
.\"
.Dd November 14, 2003
.Dt FSYNC 2
.Os
.Sh NAME
.Nm fsync ,
.Nm fsync_range
.Nd "synchronize a file's in-core state with that on disk"
.Sh LIBRARY
.Lb libc
.Sh SYNOPSIS
.In unistd.h
.Ft int
.Fn fsync "int fd"
.Ft int
.Fn fsync_range "int fd" "int how" "off_t start" "off_t length"
.Sh DESCRIPTION
.Fn fsync
causes all modified data and attributes of
.Fa fd
to be moved to a permanent storage device.
This normally results in all in-core modified copies
of buffers for the associated file to be written to a disk.
.Pp
.Fn fsync
should be used by programs that require a file to be
in a known state, for example, in building a simple transaction
facility.
.Pp
.Fn fsync_range
causes all modified data starting at
.Fa start
for length
.Fa length
of
.Fa fd
to be written to permanent storage.
Note that
.Fn fsync_range
requires that the file
.Fa fd
must be open for writing.
.Pp
.Fn fsync_range
may flush the file data in one of two manners:
.Bl -tag -width FDATASYNC
.It Dv FDATASYNC
Synchronize the file data and sufficient meta-data to retrieve the
data for the specified range.
.It Dv FFILESYNC
Synchronize all modified file data and meta-data for the specified range.
.El
.Pp
If the
.Fa length
parameter is zero,
.Fn fsync_range
will synchronize all of the file data.
.Sh RETURN VALUES
A 0 value is returned on success.
A \-1 value indicates an error.
.Sh ERRORS
.Fn fsync
or
.Fn fsync_range
fail if:
.Bl -tag -width Er
.It Bq Er EBADF
.Fa fd
is not a valid descriptor.
.It Bq Er EINVAL
.Fa fd
refers to a socket, not to a file.
.It Bq Er EIO
An I/O error occurred while reading from or writing to the file system.
.El
.Pp
Additionally,
.Fn fsync_range
fails if:
.Bl -tag -width Er
.It Bq Er EBADF
.Fa fd
is not open for writing.
.It Bq Er EINVAL
.Fa start
+
.Fa length
is less than
.Fa start .
.El
.Sh NOTES
For optimal efficiency, the
.Fn fsync_range
call requires that the file system containing the file referenced by
.Fa fd
support partial synchronization of file data.
For file systems which do
not support partial synchronization, the entire file will be synchronized
and the call will be the equivalent of calling
.Fn fsync .
.Sh SEE ALSO
.Xr sync 2 ,
.Xr sync 8
.Sh HISTORY
The
.Fn fsync
function call appeared in
.Bx 4.2 .
.Pp
The
.Fn fsync_range
function call first appeared in
.Nx 2.0
and is modeled after the function available in AIX.