Copying the dev list. The missing context is that running vim via sudo before having run it as regular user, causes permission problems with the created .viminfo file (and others?).
Vincent BEFFARA wrote: >>> Wonderful, the problem really is about permission of .viminfo! >>> >>> I noticed that you considered this to be a bug, but is this bug belongs to >>> "sudo" or "vim"? >>> >>> i.e. for non-interactive "su" of "root", vim will save at user $HOME with >>> root permission. >> FYI, this same issue was discussed at >> https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+bug/58002 > > From that discussion it would appear that it is a bug of neither, but > rather of Ubuntu itself : sudo (as configured there) preserves $HOME, > vim sees it and uses it to create .viminfo if it is not there. The > natural fix is to put the right option in the sudo config file > (always_set_home or something sounding like that). Except that this isn't always what is desired. And, if it's a bug of Ubuntu, it's also a bug of every other distribution I've ever known (thought there probably are some of which I'm aware, that set this). The biggest beef I would have with setting that option is that there doesn't appear to be a way to /disable/ it for individual cases :p ...still, I can't envision a reasonable case where the user couldn't simply type out his own home directory (~user instead of ~?), or if necessary set the environment himself within the sudo command, so it may be a reasonable solution. > However, it would be nice of vim to always test that it owns the $HOME > directory before creating files there. Would it break anything ? I think this would be a good idea as well. One could argue that if we reason this way for vim, we should reason this way about everything that ever creates config files in the user's home directory; however, not every such thing can be expected to be run as root, and editors--and most particularly vim--are extremely likely to be run as root, so I think it's not unreasonable to ask them to take on this responsibility. Perhaps rather than simply avoiding file creation, in the case of root we could set the file's owner to the real id/gid, instead of the effective one. This option is unavailable when the user is sudoing as non-root, but this seems much less likely to happen before having run it normally, than running under sudo is. Another issue, which was touched on in that Ubuntu bug report, is that vim doesn't warn or anything when it can't open .viminfo. Perhaps it should distinguish between ENOENT and EPERM, and warn in the latter case? It should possibly also warn in the event that it decides to change ownership as above (if this is decided to be a good idea), or when it is not created because of non-root, non-HOME-owner effective user id. -- Micah J. Cowan Programmer, musician, typesetting enthusiast, gamer... http://micah.cowan.name/
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