NAME
sync_file_range - sync a file segment with disk
SYNOPSIS
#define _GNU_SOURCE
#include <fcntl.h>
int sync_file_range(int fd, off64_t offset, off64_t nbytes,
unsigned int flags);
DESCRIPTION
sync_file_range() permits fine control when synchronizing the open file
referred to by the file descriptor fd with disk.
offset is the starting byte of the file range to be synchronized.
nbytes specifies the length of the range to be synchronized, in bytes;
if nbytes is zero, then all bytes from offset through to the end of
file are synchronized. Synchronization is in units of the system page
size: offset is rounded down to a page boundary; (offset+nbytes-1) is
rounded up to a page boundary.
The flags bit-mask argument can include any of the following values:
SYNC_FILE_RANGE_WAIT_BEFORE
Wait upon write-out of all pages in the specified range that
have already been submitted to the device driver for write-out
before performing any write.
SYNC_FILE_RANGE_WRITE
Initiate write-out of all dirty pages in the specified range
which are not presently submitted write-out. Note that even
this may block if you attempt to write more than request queue
size.
SYNC_FILE_RANGE_WAIT_AFTER
Wait upon write-out of all pages in the range after performing
any write.
Specifying flags as 0 is permitted, as a no-op.
Warning
This system call is extremely dangerous and should not be used in
portable programs. None of these operations writes out the file’s
metadata. Therefore, unless the application is strictly performing
overwrites of already-instantiated disk blocks, there are no guarantees
that the data will be available after a crash. There is no user
interface to know if a write is purely an overwrite. On filesystem
using copy-on-write semantics (e.g., btrfs) an overwrite of existing
allocated blocks is impossible. When writing into preallocated space,
many filesystems also require calls into the block allocator, which
this system call does not sync out to disk. This system call does not
flush disk write caches and thus does not provide any data integrity on
systems with volatile disk write caches.
Some details
SYNC_FILE_RANGE_WAIT_BEFORE and SYNC_FILE_RANGE_WAIT_AFTER will detect
any I/O errors or ENOSPC conditions and will return these to the
caller.
Useful combinations of the flags bits are:
SYNC_FILE_RANGE_WAIT_BEFORE | SYNC_FILE_RANGE_WRITE
Ensures that all pages in the specified range which were dirty
when sync_file_range() was called are placed under write-out.
This is a start-write-for-data-integrity operation.
SYNC_FILE_RANGE_WRITE
Start write-out of all dirty pages in the specified range which
are not presently under write-out. This is an asynchronous
flush-to-disk operation. This is not suitable for data
integrity operations.
SYNC_FILE_RANGE_WAIT_BEFORE (or SYNC_FILE_RANGE_WAIT_AFTER)
Wait for completion of write-out of all pages in the specified
range. This can be used after an earlier
SYNC_FILE_RANGE_WAIT_BEFORE | SYNC_FILE_RANGE_WRITE operation to
wait for completion of that operation, and obtain its result.
SYNC_FILE_RANGE_WAIT_BEFORE | SYNC_FILE_RANGE_WRITE |
SYNC_FILE_RANGE_WAIT_AFTER
This is a write-for-data-integrity operation that will ensure
that all pages in the specified range which were dirty when
sync_file_range() was called are committed to disk.
RETURN VALUE
On success, sync_file_range() returns 0; on failure -1 is returned and
errno is set to indicate the error.
ERRORS
EBADF fd is not a valid file descriptor.
EINVAL flags specifies an invalid bit; or offset or nbytes is invalid.
EIO I/O error.
ENOMEM Out of memory.
ENOSPC Out of disk space.
ESPIPE fd refers to something other than a regular file, a block
device, a directory, or a symbolic link.
VERSIONS
sync_file_range() appeared on Linux in kernel 2.6.17.
CONFORMING TO
This system call is Linux-specific, and should be avoided in portable
programs.
SEE ALSO
fdatasync(2), fsync(2), msync(2), sync(2), feature_test_macros(7)
COLOPHON
This page is part of release 3.24 of the Linux man-pages project. A
description of the project, and information about reporting bugs, can
be found at http://www.kernel.org/doc/man-pages/.