(*) My all-time favorite "Close, but no ceee-gar" was the advice column for a
Unix journal where the author *remembered* the old "3 syncs before halt"
adage - but got it Very Wrong by advising "sync;sync;sync;halt". Bonus
points if you can remember (a) the *original* reason for the advice *and*
(b) how this version was Very Wrong (there's *multiple* answers for this one ;)
As far as the reason this version was so Very Wrong, the main reason for syncing three times was the delay introduced by retyping a command thrice. Typing the whole sequence as a single line wouldn't introduce any significant delay, making the whole thing useless.
Most modern systems, however, will at least make a best-effort attempt to push all dirty blocks out to disk on a sync(), as well as on halt.
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