man7.org > Linux > man-pages

Linux/UNIX system programming training

sync(1) — Linux manual page

NAME | SYNOPSIS | DESCRIPTION | BUGS | AUTHOR | REPORTING BUGS | COPYRIGHT | SEE ALSO | COLOPHON 

SYNC(1)                       User Commands                       SYNC(1)

NAME         top

       sync - Synchronize cached writes to persistent storage

SYNOPSIS         top

       sync [OPTION] [FILE]...

DESCRIPTION         top

       Synchronize cached writes to persistent storage

       If one or more files are specified, sync only them, or their
       containing file systems.

       ]8;;https://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/manual/coreutils.html#sync-d\-d, --data]8;;\
              sync only file data, no unneeded metadata

       ]8;;https://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/manual/coreutils.html#sync-f\-f, --file-system]8;;\
              sync the file systems that contain the files

       ]8;;https://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/sync#sync--help\--help]8;;\ display this help and exit

       ]8;;https://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/sync#sync--version\--version]8;;\
              output version information and exit

BUGS         top

       Persistence guarantees vary per system.  See the system calls
       below for more details.

AUTHOR         top

       Written by Jim Meyering and Giuseppe Scrivano.

REPORTING BUGS         top

       Report bugs to: bug-coreutils@gnu.org
       GNU coreutils home page: <https://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/>
       General help using GNU software: <https://www.gnu.org/gethelp/>
       Report any translation bugs to
       <https://translationproject.org/team/>

COPYRIGHT         top

       Copyright © 2026 Free Software Foundation, Inc.  License GPLv3+:
       GNU GPL version 3 or later <https://gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html>.
       This is free software: you are free to change and redistribute it.
       There is NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by law.

SEE ALSO         top

       fdatasync(2), fsync(2), sync(2), syncfs(2)

       Full documentation <https://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/sync>
       or available locally via: info '(coreutils) sync invocation'

COLOPHON         top

       This page is part of the coreutils (basic file, shell and text
       manipulation utilities) project.  Information about the project
       can be found at ⟨http://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/⟩.  If you
       have a bug report for this manual page, see
       ⟨http://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/⟩.  This page was obtained
       from the tarball coreutils-9.11.tar.xz fetched from
       ⟨http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/coreutils/⟩ on 2026-05-24.  If you
       discover any rendering problems in this HTML version of the page,
       or you believe there is a better or more up-to-date source for the
       page, or you have corrections or improvements to the information
       in this COLOPHON (which is not part of the original manual page),
       send a mail to man-pages@man7.org

GNU coreutils 9.11              April 2026                        SYNC(1)

Pages that refer to this page: bdflush(2),  fsync(2),  quotactl(2),  sync(2),  proc_sys_vm(5),  btrfs-filesystem(8)

HTML rendering created 2026-05-24 by Michael Kerrisk, author of The Linux Programming Interface.

For details of in-depth Linux/UNIX system programming training courses that I teach, look here.

Hosting by jambit GmbH.

Cover of TLPI