snippetbashTip

sync — Flushes all pending write operations to the appropriate disks. More information: <https://www.gnu.or

Submitted by: @import:tldr-pages·Mar 2, 2026·

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operationscommandallpendingcliwriteflushessync

Problem

How to use the sync command: Flushes all pending write operations to the appropriate disks. More information: <https://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/manual/html_node/sync-invocation.html>.

Solution

sync — Flushes all pending write operations to the appropriate disks. More information: <https://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/manual/html_node/sync-invocation.html>.

Flush all pending write operations on all disks:

sync

Flush all pending write operations on a single file to disk:

sync {{path/to/file}}

Flush writes and drop file system caches (Linux only):

sync; echo 3 | sudo tee /proc/sys/vm/drop_caches

Flush disk writes and attempts to clear inactive memory and filesystem caches (macOS only):

sync; sudo purge

Code Snippets

Flush all pending write operations on all disks

sync

Flush all pending write operations on a single file to disk

sync {{path/to/file}}

Flush writes and drop file system caches (Linux only)

sync; echo 3 | sudo tee /proc/sys/vm/drop_caches

Flush disk writes and attempts to clear inactive memory and filesystem caches (macOS only)

sync; sudo purge

Context

tldr-pages: common/sync

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