sync.8: Document that the "sync dance" is not a thing

People still believe that it is essential to run sync(8) a couple of
times before a reboot/halt. Document that this has not been necessary
for a long time now.

Reviewed by:	imp, bcr, Pau Amma <pauamma@gundo.com>
MFC after:	3 days
Differential Revision:	https://reviews.freebsd.org/D33233
This commit is contained in:
Mateusz Piotrowski 2024-04-23 16:12:45 +02:00
parent 4395d3ced5
commit 177ba18307

View File

@ -26,7 +26,7 @@
.\" OUT OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF
.\" SUCH DAMAGE.
.\"
.Dd May 31, 1993
.Dd April 25, 2024
.Dt SYNC 8
.Os
.Sh NAME
@ -69,3 +69,31 @@ A
.Nm
utility appeared in
.At v4 .
.Pp
On systems older than
.Bx 4.0 ,
commands like
.Xr reboot 8
and
.Xr halt 8
were unavailable.
The shutdown procedure involved running
.Nm ,
waiting for the lights to stop,
and turning off the machine.
.Pp
Issuing three separate
.Nm
commands (one line each) was a placebo that would generally suffice in
.At v7
machines that were otherwise quiesced systems.
It replaced the one-per-line
.Nm
as a substitute for waiting.
.Pp
.Bx 4.0
introduced
.Xr reboot 2
and
.Xr sync 2
which rendered this trick obsolete.