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From: brnstnd@stealth.acf.nyu.edu (Dan Bernstein)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.questions
Subject: Re: How to flush output to disk?
Message-ID: <4176@sbcs.sunysb.edu>
Date: 6 Dec 89 21:10:38 GMT
References: <606@caldwr.UUCP> <1025@friar-taac.UUCP>
Sender: news@sbcs.sunysb.edu
Reply-To: brnstnd@stealth.acf.nyu.edu (Dan Bernstein)
Distribution: usa
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In article <606@caldwr.UUCP> rfinch@caldwr.UUCP (Ralph Finch) writes:
> Is there any way to force the output to be flushed more often, say every
> 15-30 minutes?

It sounds like you want stdio output flushed, as in the fflush() call.
If changing the source to use fflush() is impossible, stick the program
under a pty (using, for example, my pty program) so that stdio writes
each line as soon as it sees the newline.

In article <1025@friar-taac.UUCP> matthew@friar-taac.UUCP (Matthew Stier - Sun Visualization Products) writes:
> The following, untested, script should do it. 
> (I know using 'sync' is a little heavy 
> handed, but it gets the job done.)

sync makes sure that the data in the buffers is (at least scheduled to
be) written to disk; this doesn't affect any normal operations other
than straight reads from the raw disk device. In particular, it
certainly doesn't affect stdio.

---Dan