SG_SYNC(8)

✨ NAME ✨

sg_sync, but make it cute: sg_sync — send SCSI SYNCHRONIZE CACHE command 🧚

🎀 SYNOPSIS 🎀

sg_sync [--16] [--count=COUNT] [--group=GN] [--help] [--immed]
[--lba=LBA] [--sync-nv] [--timeout=SECS] [--verbose] [--version] DEVICE

💖 DESCRIPTION 💖

okay so this command sends a SYNCHRONIZE CACHE(10) or SYNCHRONIZE CACHE(16) command to DEVICE 🫶 these are defined for SCSI block devices (see SBC-3). if it works, they make sure that any blocks whose newest versions are sitting in cache get written to the medium, aka "synchronized with" the medium ✨

if LBA and COUNT are both zero (their defaults), then everything in the cache gets synchronized 💅 if LBA is greater than zero but COUNT is zero, then blocks from and including LBA up to the highest lba on the device get synchronized 🌸 and if both LBA and COUNT are non zero, then blocks in the range LBA to LBA+COUNT-1 inclusive get synchronized with the medium 🦋

🌈 OPTIONS 🌈

Arguments to long options are mandatory for short options as well. no skipping the value, bestie 🙈

• -S, --16 — runs a SYNCHRONIZE CACHE(16) command. the default is SYNCHRONIZE CACHE(10) 💜
• -c, --count=COUNT — COUNT is how many blocks to synchronize, starting from and including LBA. default is 0. when it's 0, every block in the cache from LBA up to the highest block address gets synchronized ✨
• -g, --group=GN — GN is the group number, anywhere from 0 to 63 inclusive. the default is 0. group numbers are used to segregate data collected within the device. this is a new feature in SBC-2 and can probably be ignored for the time being 🍓
• -h, --help — outputs the usage message, then exits 🫧
• -i, --immed — sets the IMMED bit in the SYNCHRONIZE CACHE command. if the command format is acceptable, this tells the device to return a GOOD status right away instead of waiting for the cached blocks to be synchronized (aka written) to the medium ⚡
• -l, --lba=LBA — LBA is the lowest logical block address in the cache to synchronize to the medium. default is 0 🎀
• -s, --sync-nv — synchronizes the (volatile) cache with the non-volatile cache 🧊 without this option (or if the device has no non-volatile cache), the sync goes to the medium instead. the SYNC_NV bit was made obsolete in SBC-3 revision 35d 💀
• -t, --timeout=SECS — SECS is how many seconds the OS waits for the SYNCHRONIZE CACHE(16) to finish before it tries to cancel the command 😭 cancelling commands (usually with the task management function "abort task") is best avoided, so be careful. this option only works together with --16. the default timeout is 60 seconds for both SYNCHRONIZE CACHE(10) and SYNCHRONIZE CACHE(16). and fun fact: timeout issues can be avoided with --immed 🕰️
• -v, --verbose — turns up the verbosity (aka debug output) 🔊
• -V, --version — prints the version string, then exits 🏷️

🦋 NOTES 🦋

with SYNCHRONIZE CACHE(16), LBA can be up to 64 bits and COUNT up to 32 bits. with SYNCHRONIZ CACHE(10) (that's how the original page spells it, lol), LBA can be up to 32 bits and COUNT up to 16 bits 🧮

numeric arguments (like LBA) can include multiplicative suffixes or be given in hexadecimal. see the "NUMERIC ARGUMENTS" section in the sg3_utils(8) man page 🔢

🌸 EXIT STATUS 🌸

the exit status of sg_sync is 0 when it's successful 🥳 otherwise, check out the sg3_utils(8) man page 🔍

👑 AUTHORS 👑

Written by Douglas Gilbert, the legend himself 🫡

🐞 REPORTING BUGS 🐞

report bugs to dgilbert at interlog dot com 📬

💜 COPYRIGHT 💜

Copyright © 2004-2018 Douglas Gilbert 🌈 this software is distributed under a BSD-2-Clause license. there is NO warranty, not even for MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE 🙃

⭐ SEE ALSO ⭐

sg_start(sg3_utils) 🧚

ur all set, bestie 💅 this was sg3_utils-1.43, May 2018, and it's the SG_SYNC(8) page 🦋✨