NAME

     fdatasync, fsync — synchronise changes to a file

LIBRARY

     Standard C Library (libc, -lc)

SYNOPSIS

     #include <unistd.h>

     int
     fdatasync(int fd);

     int
     fsync(int fd);

DESCRIPTION

     The fsync() system call causes all modified data and attributes of the file referenced by
     the file descriptor 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.

     The fdatasync() system call causes all modified data of fd to be moved to a permanent
     storage device.  Unlike fsync(), the system call does not guarantee that file attributes or
     metadata necessary to access the file are committed to the permanent storage.

     The fsync() system call should be used by programs that require a file to be in a known
     state, for example, in building a simple transaction facility.  If the file metadata has
     already been committed, using fdatasync() can be more efficient than fsync().

     Both fdatasync() and fsync() calls are cancellation points.

RETURN VALUES

     The fsync() function returns the value 0 if successful; otherwise the value -1 is returned
     and the global variable errno is set to indicate the error.

ERRORS

     The fsync() and fdatasync() calls fail if:

     [EBADF]            The fd argument is not a valid descriptor.

     [EINVAL]           The fd argument refers to a socket, not to a file.

     [EIO]              An I/O error occurred while reading from or writing to the file system.

SEE ALSO

     sync(2), syncer(4), sync(8)

HISTORY

     The fsync() system call appeared in 4.2BSD.  The fdatasync() system call appeared in
     FreeBSD 11.1.

BUGS

     The fdatasync() system call currently does not guarantee that enqueued aio(4) requests for
     the file referenced by fd are completed before the syscall returns.