How to Sync properly ?

[Patrick Allaire]

Hi,

I am having some problems with the syncing of data to flash. Last week I
have updated to 2.4.17 kernel and with cvs MTD drivers ... because I was
having the same kinds of problems with my previous version. 

If I want to move a file from a ram drive to the flash, I will issue a 'mv'
command followed by a 'sync' command. Sometime it will be updated but
sometime it wont !!! 'sync' should not return until the flash is updated ?
no ? 

To see what was happening I added some printk in the driver, in the delete
and write ! I saw some stranges behaviour. After a 'mv', sometimes the sync
command does not do any things, sometime I see somes delteting and writing
of buffers but not all of the blocks ... the remaining block will be written
to the flash in a delay from 1 to 5 mintutes later ... and sometime the sync
work fine !!!

It is really important for me, because my system has a hard power ... so if
I tell the user the system is ready to shut down ... there wont be a halt
command issued. For me the only way to do things, is to send a sync command,
when this command return, we can shut down.

I am using ST Flash, it is working on Intel flash driver(CFI) on char and
block device, with some modifications (ST cannot write partial block)

thank you

Patrick Allaire
mailto:pallaire at gameloft.com
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