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+.\" Reboot/halt and Linux information extracted from Rick Faith's original
+.\" sync(8) manpage, dating back to the Linux 0.99 days.  The Linux-specific
+.\" information is attributed to Linus Torvalds
+.\" Copyright 1992, 1993 Rickard E. Faith (faith@cs.unc.edu)
+.\" May be distributed under the GNU General Public License
+.TH SYNC 8 1998-11 "GNU fileutils 4.0" "Linux Programmer's Manual"
+.SH NAME
+sync \- synchronize data on disk with memory
+.SH SYNOPSYS
+.B "sync [\-\-help] [\-\-version]"
+.SH DESCRIPTION
+.B sync
+writes any data buffered in memory out to disk.  This can
+include (but is not limited to) modified superblocks, modified inodes,
+and delayed reads and writes.  This must be implemented by the kernel;
+The
+.B sync
+program does nothing but exercise the
+.BR sync (2)
+system call.
+.PP
+The kernel keeps data in memory to avoid doing (relatively slow) disk
+reads and writes.  This improves performance, but if the computer
+crashes, data may be lost or the filesystem corrupted as a result.
+.B sync
+ensures that everything in memory is written to disk.
+.PP
+.B sync
+should be called before the processor is halted in an unusual manner
+(e.g., before causing a kernel panic when debugging new kernel code).
+In general, the processor should be halted using the
+.BR shutdown (8)
+or
+.BR reboot (8)
+or
+.BR halt (8)
+commands, which will attempt to put the system in a quiescent state
+before calling
+.BR sync (2).
+(Various implementations of these commands exist; consult your
+documentation; on some systems one should not call
+.BR reboot (8)
+and
+.BR halt (8)
+directly.)
+.SH "GNU STANDARD OPTIONS"
+.TP
+.B "\-\-help"
+Print a usage message on standard output and exit successfully.
+.TP
+.B "\-\-version"
+Print version information on standard output, then exit successfully.
+.TP
+.B "\-\-"
+Terminate option list.
+.SH ENVIRONMENT
+The variables LANG, LC_ALL, LC_CTYPE, and LC_MESSAGES have the
+usual meaning.
+.SH "CONFORMING TO"
+POSIX 1003.2
+.SH NOTES
+On Linux,
+.B sync
+is only guaranteed to schedule the dirty blocks for writing; it can
+actually take a short time before all the blocks are finally written.
+The
+.BR reboot (8)
+and
+.BR halt (8)
+commands take this into account by sleeping for a few seconds after
+calling
+.BR sync (2).
+.PP
+This page describes
+.B sync
+as found in the file\%utils-4.0 package;
+other versions may differ slightly.
+.SH "SEE ALSO"
+.BR sync (2),
+.BR halt (8),
+.BR reboot (8),
+.BR update (8)