Erek Dyskant <erek at blumenthals.com> wrote: > This was discussed previously soon after CentOS 5.0 was released. The > > upstream distribution changed root from using vim (with syntax > > highlighting) to using vi. With the 4.X versions root was using vim. > > The 5.X configuration is: > > > > [root at bend ~]# which vi > > /bin/vi > > > > [dave at bend ~]# which vi > > vi: aliased to vim > > [dave at bend ~]# which vim > > /usr/bin/vim > > In theory, programs in /bin are statically linked, so they work even > when you have library issues going on. Anyway, just use the vim command > explicitly or add alias vi=vim to your ~root/.profile The static linking part is no longer true: [root at bend ~]# ls -l /bin/vi -rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 628808 May 9 2007 /bin/vi [root at bend ~]# file /bin/vi /bin/vi: ELF 64-bit LSB executable, AMD x86-64, version 1 (SYSV), for GNU/Linux 2.6.9, dynamically linked (uses shared libs), for GNU/Linux 2.6.9, stripped I would guess that any shared libraries used by vi are in or under /lib. That way the required libraries should also always be available. Just for comparison, the executable for vim is quite a bit bigger: [root at bend ~]# ls -l /usr/bin/vim -rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 2817056 May 9 2007 /usr/bin/vim This is just another example of the upstream distribution being very conservative for possibly several different reasons. There are also a number of ways to override their choice. I just wanted to point out that the change from vim to vi for root was intentional. Someone changing it back should understand the implications of what they're doing. Cheers, Dave -- Politics, n. Strife of interests masquerading as a contest of principles. -- Ambrose Bierce