becoming root inside vim

[purpleidea]

Hey,
too often when browsing as normal user in say /etc i:

$ vim <filename>

to start editing and then when i go to :wq to save i realize i had forgotten to start it all off with:

$ sudo vim <filename>

and i now don't have permission to save. I know that i can :w /tmp/x and then:

$ sudo cp /tmp/x /etc/<filename>

but i was wondering if someone perhaps knew of some nice vim trick i could do so that i can save without retyping all the text..., sort of the way you can "become root" from within aptitude

many thanks!
_J

[LaRoza]

but i was wondering if someone perhaps knew of some nice vim trick i could do so that i can save without retyping all the text..., sort of the way you can "become root" from within aptitude

Yes, run the editor with sudo when you do it.

[dwhitney67]

I'm not aware of any trick, other than perhaps doing something (stupid) like changing the permissions of the file so that it is writable by a regular user, and then after the write is complete, reverting back to the original permissions.

While in vim, you can issue shell commands using the :!<cmd>, where <cmd> could be something like "sudo chmod 666 filename". When you are done, repeat the command but change the permissions to 644.

Personally I think this is crude and should be avoided. When you use vim to open a protected file, it tells you at the very bottom of the editor that it is a read-only file. Try to get into the habit at looking at the bottom of the editor when you first edit a file.

[samjh]

but i was wondering if someone perhaps knew of some nice vim trick i could do so that i can save without retyping all the text..., sort of the way you can "become root" from within aptitude

I don't know of any tricks like that within vim.

You could always :w ~/temp.file first and then sudo cp ~/temp.file /destination/dir later.

[stroyan]

That is an interesting question.
I sometimes find myself writing temporary files and thinking "I'll be baack".
There is a sudo vi feature at
http://www.vim.org/scripts/script.php?script_id=729
that has a special sudo prefix for opening a file with sudo.
Then you could actually use split buffers to merge in changes.

Taking a tactic from that script it would be possible to use a command map
to do an sudo write from a : command.
Warm up with putting this in .vimrc-

cmap w!! %!sudo tee > /dev/null %

then modify a protected file and try to write with
:w
then
:w!
then
:w!!

Got it!

[mssever]

I make a wrapper for vim. I call this script ~/bin/vi (I'm used to typing vi instead of vim, anyway):

#!/bin/bash

precommand=
for i in "$@" ; do
    if [ -f "$i" -a ! -w "$i" ] ; then precommand="sudo " ; break ; fi
done

exec ${precommand}vim "$@"

This script runs vim with sudo if any file mentioned on the command line isn't writable.

For the way I work, this isn't risky. Everything (with a few minor exceptions) outside of $HOME isn't user-writable. So the only safety against accidentally doing something stupid is knowing what I'm editing--no matter whether I typed sudo or not.

[purpleidea]

That is an interesting question.
I sometimes find myself writing temporary files and thinking "I'll be baack".
There is a sudo vi feature at
http://www.vim.org/scripts/script.php?script_id=729
that has a special sudo prefix for opening a file with sudo.
Then you could actually use split buffers to merge in changes.

Taking a tactic from that script it would be possible to use a command map
to do an sudo write from a : command.
Warm up with putting this in .vimrc-

cmap w!! %!sudo tee > /dev/null %

then modify a protected file and try to write with
:w
then
:w!
then
:w!!

Got it!

took me a bit of effort to figure this out, but ultimately this was the perfect answer / solution.
many thanks !

_J

[542]

took me a bit of effort to figure this out, but ultimately this was the perfect answer / solution.
many thanks !

_J

This is exactly what I'd also like to do - I've placed the line in my .vimrc and tried typing w!! which seems to do nothing. What am I missing?

[MONODA]

whenever that happens to me I just do :q! which should force it to save.

[samjh]

whenever that happens to me I just do :q! which should force it to save.

Actually that forces vim to quit without saving.