Re: [PATCH v3] introduce sys_syncfs to sync a single file system

Indan Zupancic wrote:

I'm not pushing for any official convention, just what seems good taste.

In cases like this, conventions (consistency and best practices) are
very important.

Less code added, less bloat. Architecture independent, no need to update
all system call tables everywhere (all archs, libc versions and strace).
Two files changed, instead of 7 (which only hooks up x86).

Thanks for explaining.  Those do seem like good reasons to use a ioctl
instead of a new syscall.

In this case it's just a performance improvement over sync(2). It doesn't
add a new feature. Main argument given for the performance problem seems
to be "NFS can be slow". Anything else?

Huh?  It is not just the speed of the sync --- unnecessary writeback
will cause wear on your thumbdrive, eat up your laptop battery, and
kill I/O performance in other tasks running at the same time.

I'm afraid I don't understand what you're saying here at all.  Would
you say that fsync is superfluous, too?

Jonathan