[LAD] [OT] bash vs disk activity

[Dirk Jagdmann]

Hello Patrick,

> How would I track the 5 minutes of data transfer with bash?

The only reliable way on unix to ensure all data has been written to the 
disk is to umount it. The "sync" (API call or program) is merely a hint 
to flush filesystem buffers at the point where the call was made, but 
one second later, while the sync is still running, new dirty buffers 
might be generated. So you should use something along the following:

time ( mount /dev/xxx /mnt/yyy ; cp -a /whatever /mnt/yyy ; umount 
/mnt/yyy )

-- 
---> Dirk Jagdmann
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