Problem with vim when logged in as root

Question

When I login as root or edit a file by sudo mode all of the options in my /etc/vimrc are not working (e.g. highlight line-number etc.)

Solution 1

I guess the reason is that your home directory ~ is changed, where contains vim configuration file .vimrc .

Normally ~ is /root if you login as root, and is /home/YOURNAME if you login as YOURNAME.

Solution 2

Maybe you are using vi to try to start VIM which will not use /etc/vimrc.

If that is the case, you have two options:

1. Use vim
2. Modify /etc/profile.d/vim.sh to set vi as an alias for all users not only for users with a uid >= 100

Solution 3

Which vimrc are you talking about? I don't use/know vim, but in many cases rc files have two kinds of "incarnation": a system-wide rc-file under /etc that dictates the system defaults for the application and user-wide rc-files under the user homedirs, where users set their own settings, that override the defaults from the system-wide configuration file.

Meanwhile, there is sudo, that runs a program as another user (usually root, maybe, like su, it allows you to impersonate users other than root).

As you're running vim through sudo, my guess is that you're expecting ~/.vimrc to be something that it isn't. Either that, or you don't understand what is sudo doing when you invoke it.

If it really is ~/.vimrc, then it's not "not working", it's actually working quite well, the issue is that there's probably no ~root/.vimrc, or it exists with different settings than these you were expecting.

Solution 4

This appears a result of introducing the additional hard-coded "default" vimrc in the newer versions of vim as /usr/share/vim/vimXY/defaults.vim.

https://github.com/vim/vim/issues/2917#issuecomment-389203845

Until this is fixed, I see the only work-around in creating per-user ~/.vimrc files (including /root/.vimrc).

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Comments

[Admin]

Does user root have a vimrc?

[Admin]

i config at /etc/vimrc

[Admin]

What does :echo $VIM (in vim) tell you? (According to my understanding of :help system-vimrc, the global vimrc is expected to be $VIM/vimrc)

[Admin]

$VIM is /usr/share/vim

[Admin]

You could try placing a copy of your vimrc in /usr/share/vim/ (while I do not understand why /etc/vimrc is read at all when vim is started by a normal user)

[Admin]

Some distros set up /usr/share/vim/vimrc as a symlink to /etc/vim/vimrc.

[George Eracleous]

i'm config option in /etc/vimrc.