i was editing a file in vi and my internet connection
crashed...now when i try open the file it says that it was busy editing the file etc...and that the process is still running...how do i get back to that vi session the id is 56183...any ideas of what i can do? vi -r didnt work

thanks

(Assuming you're actually referring to 'vim' on a Linux system..)

Launch 'vi' (with no arguments), and try:
Also, consider using 'GNU screen' or 'tmux' for your remote work, to avoid problems like this altogether.

the last work wasnt saved, am i right ?
then just kill that process and start over.

what died is just your terminal session but the instance is still running that's why the process is alive and kept holding the lock on the file.

Maybe the process is not running, because the parent (terminal) is gone; however maybe a temporary file of the type .<something> is there. I'm not a vim expert, but the later versions try to keep your last edit place on a file. And what I do know in a similar situation is if I have to force shutdown when I have a truecrypt volume mounted, it leaves a .truecrypt-lock-<myusername> file in my home; and when I boot back up I have to remove that file or it complains that truecrypt is already running. It really isn't, but the error says that because it sees the lock file. Therefore see if vim has some sort of lock file or a directory in your home containing something like that.

You could try lsof to see exactly which file is open and try 'cat' ing that to a new temp file.
you may be able to recover most of it from there.
You can also check for eg a file called 'test.x' should have a backup (swp) file called '.test.x.swp' (note leading '.' .
You can see this using
in the correct dir or as indicated by lsof above.
http://linux.die.net/man/8/lsof