I'm trying to save my modified "menu.lst" file in vi. When I save the file, vi says: 'menu.lst' is read only.
How can I fix this?
The file you are trying to save is read-only, meaning you cannot modify its contents. It needs to be marked as writable. The process varies depending on your OS. Here are some helpful resources on how to change permissions of files:
For Windows 10: Nibbleguru: How to remove read-only attribute in Windows 10
For Linux (using chmod): TLDP: File Permissions
For macOS: Chron: How to Change File Permission From Read-Only to Read-Write on a Mac
EDIT:
As filbranden pointed out, for Grub's files, you should be opening vi using the sudo command. Grub's files are meant to be modified by root only. You should be opening your files using sudo vi menu.lst instead.
I have this on my vimrc
cnoremap w!! execute 'silent! write !sudo tee % >/dev/null' <bar> edit!
command! SaveAsRoot w !sudo tee %
cnoreabbrev sudow SaveAsRoot
For instant use, just copy to the clipboard and run:
:#+
:SaveAsRoot
The :#+ loads your clipboard into vim memory which allows you to run the given commands while not saved on your vimrc.
People suggest using sudo vi(m) on unix, but this could have unwanted consequences: all commands executed in this window are done by root and so you could accidentally do unwanted things like deleting file or just creating files owned by root.
Instead you should think about using sudoedit instead. It will copy the file to /tmp and open it in $EDITOR (if you are using vim, you should set it in your ~/.profile / ~/.bash_profile).
But beware: Something I stumbled across: the original file is only replaced when you close vim - no matter how often you save! (This is, because you are editing the file in /tmp and not the original).
It is not that I don't use sudo vim but if I do, I am extra cautious about what I do ;) I do it for example if I know that I will need to edit multiple files as root, or that I want to execute other commands from within vim as root (e.g. git)
And something even more important to me: sudo vim is using roots vimrc instead of mine, but with sudoedit I have my own config...
Related
I am having trouble saving my settings on vim. I know that in order to do that I need to open the vimrc file but when I do that it says that the file is readonly and won't let me edit it, preventing me from saving my settings.
It says that in order to force save it or override it, I need to add the ! mark after :w in the command section, which I do, but it still does not work.
I can't find any other solution to this problem.
Note: I am using Windows 8.1.
On Windows, you may need to run your editor as administrator to write to your system's _vimrc file.
You may also create a _vimrc in your home directory (e.g. C:\Users\Piet\_vimrc, see the output of :echo $HOME) without administrator access.
You can solve it this way:
Instead of :w, type :w !sudo tee %. I guess it should work.
(my answer is based on this tutotial where the whole problem is well-described)
You may be editing the one global vimrc in /etc/vimrc to which you don't have access.
Make sure you're editing ~/.vimrc and check that you have read and write priviledges to the file (ls -l ~/.vimrc). Since the file is in your home folder you should have those privilages but it won't hurt to verify.
I have modified the .vimrc file in my user. The settings dont work when i switch to superuser.
When i check the contents of the file (using vim editor) i can see the mapped keystrokes of newlines
(with all the text extending on the rightside beyond screen on same line), but when i check the contents of .vimrc as root, i see all the text in the same window screen one below the other (this may be a very stupid difference, but that is the only difference i noticed. all the data in the file is same).
i am unable to understand what is wrong and how can i correct it.
root is a user too, when you start vim with root, vim load the root's Home/.vimrc usually it is /root/.vimrc
You can cp or ln -s your user's vimrc to /root if this is a personal desktop machine.
I hope I understood your problem.
You did not state a precise question, so for the sake of completeness :
If what you want is being able to modify files as root using your user's vim and .vimrc, you can do
sudo -e /path/to/your/file
sudo will use the editor configured in $EDITOR as the current user, to edit a temporary copy of the file that will get copied over when you write the file.
The caveat is that you will not be able to have any edition history between sessions. For example, if you modify /etc/group once, save the changes and quit, and then reopen the file again, you will not be able to undo the modification you did at first.
For Neovim users, you can do what comes next:
If your root user settings for neovim are important, make a
backup for those dotfiles.
Create a symbolic link from your default user to /root/.config directory.
sudo mv /root/.config/nvim /root/.config/nvim.bkp; sudo ln -s $HOME/.config/nvim /root/.config/
Be aware that some plugins may need some files that are not under
.config/nvim directory.
On Debian GNU/Linux there is also a shared configuration file in /usr/share/vim/vimrc. (Actually this is a soft link to /etc/vim/vimrc.) See the bottom of the man page on vim.
I'm using CentOS and created a .vimrc file in my /home directory. I tested it out by creating a txt file and yes, that worked fine. Now, I have my project files in my /srv directory with SELinux turned on. I tried opening a file: vim README.txt and yes, my .vimrc settings are still being applied.
Now, since I'm in the /srv directory, simply doing vim means that my file is read only. So, I do sudo vim README.txt in order to be able to edit files. Now, the problem lies that once I do sudo, none of my .vimrc settings are applied. I tried creating a copy of .vimrc in the /srv folder but that didn't work either.
How do I apply .vimrc settings while using sudo?
Use sudoedit instead of sudo vim. You should be doing that anyway. Make sure your EDITOR environment variable is set to vim (probably already is, or vim is the default; you can set it in your .profile analog if need be).
As shown here, you can use the following:
sudo -E vim README.txt
From the man page:
-E The -E (preserve environment) option indicates to the security policy that the user wishes to preserve their existing environment variables. The
security policy may return an error if the -E option is specified and the user does not have permission to preserve the environment.
The accepted answer is the most secure. But this one is more flexible as I can use sudo -E operation with any operation, I don't have to configure anything else beforehand.
/root/.vimrc is the working directory of sudo vim.
You need copy your .vimrc file from /home/ec2-user/.vimrc to /root/.vimrc
The presented solutions in the other responses work but are not very practical, as you have to enter you password every time you want to edit a file.
I usually have a tmux session open within which I am rooted via sudo su, so I enter my password once at the beginning of the session and can then work for hours without having to enter it again.
I worked around the issue presented here by creating the following symbolic links :
sudo su
ln -s /home/MY-USER-NAME/.vimrc .vimrc
ln -s /home/MY-USER-NAME/.vim .vim
You might need to remove the /root/.vim/ directory first.
I hope this helps
Sometimes when I edit a file which require root permission (e.g. files under /etc), but I forget run vim as sudo.
After edit finished, and type :wq to save and leave, I find I can't, even using !wq, because the file is readonly.
If I leave and re-edit the file, all my work will lost, but if not, I cannot save my edit. So, how can I gain root permission to write without leaving vim?
To force a save use the following command
:w !sudo tee %
It will prompt you for your password.
The mentioned trick with tee is nice; if you need this often I'd recommend the SudoEdit plugin, which offers a :SudoWrite command (and even a sudo: protocol handler).
I am frequently opening files that are readonly, I would like to know if there is a way to make them writable from inside Vim. I do not mean :w!, I need the file to be writeable after I close Vim.
If you are on a unix based machine you can always just use the unix command.
:!chmod 777 %
http://ss64.com/bash/chmod.html
Otherwise on windows, you should look into the calcs command:
http://www.delawarepchelp.com/system/dos/calcs.htm
The issue comes from the fact that after changing the file attributes Vim will detect it and will try to reload the file and you will loose what you typed.
The best seems to create a function that redefines the autocmd FileChangedShell to do nothing when the attribute change is detected.
See this example of setting file attributes without reloading a buffer where an example is given for making all files executables.
This should do the trick for you
I found this solution elsewhere:
:set readonly!
:set modifiable
my situation was that vim was opening my file, which I chmod 777 from the commandline before opening, as readonly. Not sure if this helps you at all...
edit: forgot the second command. only the combination of the two worked.
you can use :! to execute shell commands. So you could change the user using :!chown myusername filename or change the access right using for example :!chmod o+w filename
Additionally, if the file was writeable only by another user (and you are not owner, so can't chmod it) you might map this command:
:command SuWrite %!sudo tee %
Of course, sudo -u username for other users
!sudo chmod 777 %
When it asks if you want to use the buffer, type "O" for ok.
You can use the SudoWrite command from the vim-eunuch plugin, which enables you to write to a file with sudo even if you forgot to open vim with sudo. It's a great way to eliminate that annoying behavior when you forget.