On Wed, 11 Apr 2012, Toby Corkindale wrote:

According to the man page: flush If set, the filesystem will try to flush to disk more early than normal. Not set by default.

Can you say what the default kernel policies related to file system flushing are these days? My knowledge may be outdated. Personally I don't care that much whether _my_ docs are saved immediatelly or not, I am connected to a 99.something % reliable power grid, and a loss of a byte once in a blue moon isn't the end of the world I guess. I believe in using menu options like "Safely remove storage" - they imply that without it I may be in trouble. I don't know Windows in detail but I know they do file buffering too. So since leaving single task OSes as CP/M or MS/DOS behind I don't expect that "written by app" means "written to disk". The servers have UPS and battery-backed controllers to ensure this. Of course I am in trouble if the file system gets itself in the knot while flushing - one reason to avoid file systems with a bad reputation. Most of the time kernel developers are writing better and safer code than application developers. vi and emacs are a bit of the exception that proves the rule. Regards Peter