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sync not necessary on Mac OS X
Authored by: daveschroeder on Feb 16, '04 08:19:55PM
All actions performed by sync are performed by reboot, halt, and shutdown on Mac OS X, and sync - even a single one - is not necessary.

Doing sync two (or three, as in this example) times is not necessary. The first time does the exact same thing as all subsequent ones do. The reason it was done multiple times was:

1. Sometimes the first sync alone wouldn't complete by the time the system was halted. Doing sync one or two more times ensured that the initial (only meaningful) sync completed. Doing one sync and just waiting a bit would have been completely sufficient.

2. Completely aside from the purpose of sync itself, to give the person rebooting or downing the box a chance to think "Hey, is rebooting this thing now really what I'm supposed to be doing?" This is somewhat supplanted by sudo on today's systems.

3. Other people will give you various and sundry reasons.

It's completely unnecessary on modern systems, including Mac OS X, and the only reason anyone still does it is habit, superstition, or both. :-)

For more information, see this old USENET thread.

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