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From: bill@twwells.com (T. William Wells)
Subject: Re: int link(const int inode, const char *name2)
To: jonny@gaia.coppe.ufrj.br (Joao Carlos Mendes Luis)
Date: Tue, 25 Jun 1996 00:50:15 -0400 (EDT)
Cc: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org
In-Reply-To: <199606250445.BAA19812@mailhost.coppe.ufrj.br> from "Joao Carlos Mendes Luis" at Jun 25, 96 01:45:43 am
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> set paranoid mode on
>
> #define quoting(T. William Wells)
> // Actually, crashing your machine is pretty safe, especially if the
> // machine is idled. To make it idle, log off everyone, shut down
> // special systems (e.g., innd is best shut down by using ctlinnd,
> // not a kill), kill all user processes (except the one keeping the
> // file open), kill all system processes other than 0-4 and the
> // gettys, sync, wait a few seconds, ...
>
> sync;sync;sync

That bit of ancient history is purely psychological. Since sync
isn't synchronous, after the command returns, your buffers aren't
all written. However, after you've typed the command twice again,
odds are they are. :-)