Re: Reality, humor, and history (was Re: MORE CRITICAL FLAWS IN MS WINDOWS EXPLORER

[Andrew Farmer <andfarm () teknovis com>]

On 12 Jan 2005, at 01:36, Valdis.Kletnieks () vt edu wrote:
> (*) My all-time favorite "Close, but no ceee-gar" was the advice 
> column for a
> Unix journal where the author *remembered* the old "3 syncs before 
> halt"
> adage - but got it Very Wrong by advising "sync;sync;sync;halt".  Bonus
> points if you can remember (a) the *original* reason for the advice 
> *and*
> (b) how this version was Very Wrong (there's *multiple* answers for 
> this one ;)

As far as the reason this version was so Very Wrong, the main reason 
for syncing three times was the delay introduced by retyping a command 
thrice. Typing the whole sequence as a single line wouldn't introduce 
any significant delay, making the whole thing useless.

Most modern systems, however, will at least make a best-effort attempt 
to push all dirty blocks out to disk on a sync(), as well as on halt.

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