#1031836 nvi: refuses to start with read-only rootfs (/var/tmp)

Package:
nvi
Source:
nvi
Description:
4.4BSD re-implementation of vi
Submitter:
наб
Date:
2023-02-24 15:03:06 UTC
Severity:
normal
#1031836#5
Date:
2023-02-23 22:31:22 UTC
From:
To:
Dear Maintainer,
#1031836#10
Date:
2023-02-23 23:00:52 UTC
From:
To:
Hi,

在 2023-02-23星期四的 23:31 +0100，наб写道：

According to FHS and Linux common practice [1][2], /var/tmp/ should be
world-writable in a sane environment. Supporting a non-standard environment
should be in wishlist. You are welcome to provide a patch to Debian or
forward the patch to upstream. Please note that the upstream of nvi may not
be active now [3], but giving it a try is always harmless.

Thanks,
Boyuan Yang


[1] https://refspecs.linuxfoundation.org/FHS_3.0/fhs/ch05s15.html
[2]
https://www.redhat.com/en/blog/polyinstantiating-tmp-and-vartmp-directories
[3] likely to be https://repo.or.cz/nvi.git
#1031836#17
Date:
2023-02-24 14:59:34 UTC
From:
To:
Yeah, well, too bad systems go insane sometimes, hey.
At a glance, the expectation of always having somewhere to put the
database appears baked in pretty hard, and making it a "don't worry
about it" issue seems more trouble than it's worth;
with some ahead-of-time config manipulation it's possible to put
  set recdir=/tmp
in /etc/vi.exrc, which does work around this.

Nevertheless, without it, because exrc is off by default,
it's impossible for non-root to have a functioning vi with a ro rootfs,
sans setting HOME somewhere writable,
and abusing that in lieu of a directory startup file,
but the ergonomics of that are, well.

Best,
наб