-
When you invoke
vi
, the message
[open mode]
appears.
Your terminal type is probably incorrectly identified.
Quit the editing session immediately by typing
:q
and ask your
system administrator to provide an adequate terminal type setting.
-
You see one of the following messages:
Visual needs addressable cursor or upline capability
Bad termcap entry
Termcap entry too long
terminal
: Unknown terminal type
Block device required
Not a typewriter
Your terminal type is either undefined, or there's probably something
wrong with your
termcap
or
terminfo
entry.
Enter
:q
to quit. Then ask your system administrator to select
a terminal type for your environment.
-
A
[new file]
message appears when you think a file already
exists.
You are probably in the wrong directory.
Enter
:q
to quit. Then check to see that you are in the
correct directory for that file (enter
pwd
at the UNIX prompt).
If you are in the right directory, check the list of files in the directory (with
ls
)
to see whether the file exists under a slightly different name.
-
You invoke
vi
, but you get a colon prompt
(indicating that you're in
ex
line-editing mode).
You probably typed an interrupt before
vi
could draw the screen.
Enter
vi
by typing
vi
at the
ex
prompt (
:
).
-
One of the following messages appears:
[Read only]
File is read only
Permission denied
"Read only" means that you can only look at the file; you cannot
save any changes you make.
You may have invoked
vi
in
view mode
(with
view
or
vi -R
), or you do not have write permission for the file.
See the section "Problems Saving Files" below.
-
One of the following messages appears:
Bad file number
Block special file
Character special file
Directory
Executable
Non-ascii file
file
non-ASCII
The file you've called up to edit is not a regular text file.
-
When you type
:q
because of one of the above difficulties,
the message appears:
No write since last change (:quit! overrides).
You have modified the file without realizing it.
Type
:q!
to leave
vi
.
Your changes from this session will not be saved in the file.