sync

[Kåre Jonsson]

Hello

I did 'PROMPTER> man sync' and found this to be the trouble report place 
for sync.

I believe sync caused me trouble.

I've used a partucular floppy (1.44 MB 3.5" - CLASSIC HD) for some time. 
Lets say 3 months and I write a journal/diary on it. I would say that 
for an average I write to it 2-3 times a day, and read from it once a 
day. I carry this disc between a DELL win 98, office 97 pc at home and a 
FUJITSU-SIEMENS Lifebook S Series running Debian Linux 2.4.18 with a 
FUJITSU floppy 3.5" FDD unit Model FPCFDD02 ; P/N CA02950-1482 ; S/N 
08Q058-2498. I am entirely sure that I had never used sync before this 
occasion and also that the file I was editing wore no sign of trouble 
before this and that the problem existed exactly after the sync 
operation. Furthermore. There are about 15 other files on this floppy 
and the file in question was the only one opened at this moment and all 
the other ones are okay. If I would like to trust sync and blame someone 
else it would demand that this was due to overusage of the floppy and 
that the problem occured at the same time on exactly this file from pure 
insidence. Since I cannot believe this (I'd be chocked by someone who 
did) I believe sync did it. Statistically I am definately right. The 
floppy unit and the floppy disc appears to be working just fine afterwards.

I was editing a rtf-file with Staroffice 5.2 at this moment.

The lost work can be reedited with 10 minutes of double work. I am not 
crying but I am nourishing the hope that LINUX will turn out to be the 
superior operating system.

Analysis of the file shows that it appears to be simply cut at a late 
point. After 95% och the text I would estimate. This analysis was done 
by typing 'PROMPTER> cat april2002 > x.txt ; vi x.txt'. It could not be 
read by staroffice (or word) cause there is now a format error if it is 
to be interpreted as RTF.

My friend who hinted me about sync receives a copy of this e-mail. I 
wanted to flush my file to disc in some better way than unmounting and 
then mounting it back.

I would be interested if there is any knowledge about this problem or if 
I can help you further.

Kind regards,
Kåre Jonsson