How can you flush a write using a file descriptor?

Question

It turns out this whole misunderstanding of the open() versus fopen() stems from a buggy I2C driver in the Linux 2.6.14 kernel on an ARM. Backporting a worki

Answer 1

You have two choices:

1. Use fileno() to obtain the file descriptor associated with the stdio stream pointer

2. Don't use <stdio.h> at all, that way you don't need to worry about flush either - all writes will go to the device immediately, and for character devices the write() call won't even return until the lower-level IO has completed (in theory).

For device-level IO I'd say it's pretty unusual to use stdio. I'd strongly recommend using the lower-level open(), read() and write() functions instead (based on your later reply):

int fd = open("/dev/i2c", O_RDWR);
ioctl(fd, IOCTL_COMMAND, args);
write(fd, buf, length);

Answer 2

It sounds like what you are looking for is the fsync() function (or fdatasync()?), or you could use the O_SYNC flag in your open() call.

Answer 3

fflush() only flushes the buffering added by the stdio fopen() layer, as managed by the FILE * object. The underlying file itself, as seen by the kernel, is not buffered at this level. This means that writes that bypass the FILE * layer, using fileno() and a raw write(), are also not buffered in a way that fflush() would flush.

As others have pointed out, try not mixing the two. If you need to use "raw" I/O functions such as ioctl(), then open() the file yourself directly, without using fopen<() and friends from stdio.

Answer 4

Have you tried disabling buffering?

setvbuf(fd, NULL, _IONBF, 0);

Answer 5

If you want to go the other way round (associate FILE* with existing file descriptor), use fdopen() :

                                                          FDOPEN(P)

NAME

       fdopen - associate a stream with a file descriptor

SYNOPSIS

       #include <stdio.h>

       FILE *fdopen(int fildes, const char *mode);

Answer 6

I think what you are looking for may be

int fsync(int fd);

or

int fdatasync(int fd);

fsync will flush the file from kernel buffer to the disk. fdatasync will also do except for the meta data.