The server must answer the flush message immediately. If it recognizes oldtag as the tag of a pending transaction, it should abort any pending response and discard that tag. In either case, it should respond with an Rflush echoing the tag (not oldtag) of the Tflush message. A Tflush can never be responded to by an Rerror message.

When the client sends a Tflush, it must wait to receive the corresponding Rflush before reusing oldtag for subsequent messages. If a response to the flushed request is received before the Rflush, the client must honor the response as if it had not been flushed, since the completed request may signify a state change in the server. For instance, Tcreate may have created a file and Twalk may have allocated a fid. If no response is received before the Rflush, the flushed transaction is considered to have been cancelled, and should be treated as though it had never been sent.

Several exceptional conditions are handled correctly by the above specification: sending multiple flushes for a single tag, flushing after a transaction is completed, flushing a Tflush, and flushing an invalid tag.