Manual: eatmydata
eatmydata(1) General Commands Manual eatmydata(1)
NAME
eatmydata - transparently disable fsync() and other data-to-disk synchronization calls
SYNOPSIS
eatmydata [--] command [ command arguments ... ]
DESCRIPTION
eatmydata runs a command in the environment where data-to-disk synchronization calls (like fsync(), fdatasync(),
sync(), msync() and open() O_SYNC / O_DSYNC flags) have no effect. LD_PRELOAD library libeatmydata overrides respecā
tive C library calls with custom functions that don't trigger synchronization but return success nevertheless.
You may use eatmydata in two ways. In normal mode, just execute eatmydata directly and pass a command-to-be-run and
its arguments via command line. In order to use symlink mode, create a symlink to /usr/bin/eatmydata with the fileā
name (a.k.a basename) of another program in the PATH and execute eatmydata via that symlink. Then eatmydata will find
that program in the PATH and run it in the libeatmydata environment repassing all command line options.
OPTIONS
Please note that eatmydata does not process any command line options in symlink mode. All command line options will
be repassed to the underlying executable as-is.
command
The command to execute. It may be either a full path or the name of the command in PATH. In case command canā
not be found in PATH, eatmydata will fail.
command arguments
Arbitrary number of arguments to pass to the command being executed.
-- Optional command separator for compatibility with similar utilities. Ignored at the moment.
EXAMPLES
Given PATH is /usr/bin and both /usr/bin/aptitude and /usr/bin/eatmydata are installed, the following:
$ ln -s /usr/bin/eatmydata ./aptitude
$ ./aptitude moo
is equivalent to:
$ eatmydata -- aptitude moo
Therefore, you may use symlink mode to automatically run specific programs in the libeatmydata environment whenever
you run them from PATH. For example, given standard PATH settings, just do:
# ln -s /usr/bin/eatmydata /usr/local/bin/aptitude
and enjoy sync-free aptitude system-wide.
CAVEAT
When using eatmydata with setarch (including alias such as linux32), or anyway with chroots with a different archiā
tectures than the host's, make sure to install the matching architecture of libeatmydata1 both in the setarch enviā
ronment and host's.
Trying to load libeatmydata manually (without using the wrapper script) and using it through a chroot, especially if
the eatmydata version differ between outside and inside, is probably going to fail do the different position of the
library on the file system.
The safest way to manually load libeatmydata is by setting the following two environment variables (shell syntax):
LD_LIBRARY_PATH=${LD_LIBRARY_PATH:+"$LD_LIBRARY_PATH:"}/usr/lib/libeatmydata
LD_PRELOAD=${LD_PRELOAD:+"$LD_PRELOAD "}libeatmydata.so
These two variables accounts the case of a Debian Jessie host with a Debian Wheezy chroot, where the position of the
library changed.
November 2014 eatmydata(1)