Vim colors not working as root but okay in normal logins

robinhood1995 · 07-01-2007, 11:47 AM

Hi All,

We I just installed CentOS 5 on a new server and I have a strange thing going on.

In the past I never used a .vimrc and all worked okay for all the the redhat and centos versions.

After the install I created some users and logged in. Here no problem with the vim-enchanced mode all the colors are on when in vi mode to edit scripts.

No if I login as root I do not get any colors, does anyone have any ideas?

Thanks

Ahmed · 07-01-2007, 01:38 PM

It worked for me by copying .vimrc to /usr/share/vim/vim71/vimrc
Just to make sure, in that directory you'll find files called vimrc_example.vim

-A

robinhood1995 · 07-01-2007, 04:35 PM

I can't copy a .vimrc as I do not have on on the system.

druuna · 07-01-2007, 06:52 PM

Hi,

There should be an example vimrc in /usr/share/vim/vim70/ called vimrc_example.vim (change the vim70 part to your vim version). Copy that to /etc/vimrc (I assume there isn't a /etc/vimrc present). Edit /etc/vimrc to your liking.

/etc/vimrc is read globally by vim, so root should read it too, no need for individual ~/.vimrc file(s) although you can still create one for specific, user dependent settings.

Hope this helps.

robinhood1995 · 07-01-2007, 07:08 PM

Thanks guys so far for the help.

That is what is so strange the /etc/vimrc does exist and I guess that is what the normal logins are using as they do work perfectly and as I do not have and .vimrc files on the system.

My version is also vm70 but the only one it does not work on is the root login funny enough...

I will try to replace with the vimrc_example.vim you both suggested.

druuna · 07-01-2007, 07:31 PM

Hi,

Strange.

Just some other things you could check:

- Is there a root alias that starts vi(m) with the -u NORC option? [starts vim without reading the vimrc file(s)]
- What does :version (in command mode) say about where it looks for vimrc files?
My output looks like this:

Quote:

system vimrc file: "/etc/vimrc"
user vimrc file: "$HOME/.vimrc"
user exrc file: "$HOME/.exrc"

- Is vimrc found during startup (I used strace and found he following in all the lines of output, At the time I had no .vimrc present only a /etc/vimrc):

Quote:

.
.
.
chdir("/etc") = 0
getcwd("/etc", 1024) = 5
fchdir(3) = 0
close(3) = 0
stat64("/etc/vimrc", {st_mode=S_IFREG|0644, st_size=1045, ...}) = 0
open("/etc/vimrc", O_RDONLY) = 3
fstat64(3, {st_mode=S_IFREG|0644, st_size=1045, ...}) = 0
mmap2(NULL, 4096, PROT_READ|PROT_WRITE, MAP_PRIVATE|MAP_ANONYMOUS, -1, 0) = 0xb7fc6000
read(3, "\" Begin /etc/vimrc\n\" General opt"..., 4096) = 1045
_llseek(3, 0, [0], SEEK_SET) = 0
stat64("/etc/vimrc", {st_mode=S_IFREG|0644, st_size=1045, ...}) = 0
read(3, "\" Begin /etc/vimrc\n\" General opt"..., 4096) = 1045
open(".", O_RDONLY) = 4
.
.
.

Hope this gets you closer to a solution.