Re: OT: Programming (was Re: word creation algorithm)

On Jan 27, 2008 11:15 PM, Mark J. Reed <markjreed@...> wrote:
> In a similar vein, for a long time the standard idiom to reboot a UNIX
> system was to run the command "sync", then run the command "sync" again, and
> only then run the command "reboot".  The "sync" is supposed to "sync"hronize
> the portions of the file system buffered in memory with the actual files on
> disk, so that the system comes back up in a consistent state, but it
> actually only puts a request for a sync operation in the OS's processing
> queue, so if you do the reboot right away it might not have done anything
> yet...
Whereas if you "sync" twice, then during the time that you're typing
in the second "sync" command, the system might have got around to
executing the first one :)

(Was it really "sync; sync; halt" or "sync; sync; sync; halt"? I think
I've seen both versions.)

Cheers,
--
Philip Newton <philip.newton@...>