X-Spam-Check-By: sourceware.org Content-class: urn:content-classes:message MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Subject: RE: vim 7 gives error when editing /etc/hosts Date: Tue, 13 Jun 2006 09:32:49 -0400 Message-ID: From: "Harig, Mark" To: "Frank Fesevur" , X-IsSubscribed: yes Mailing-List: contact cygwin-help@cygwin.com; run by ezmlm List-Subscribe: List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: , Sender: cygwin-owner@cygwin.com Mail-Followup-To: cygwin@cygwin.com Delivered-To: mailing list cygwin@cygwin.com Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-MIME-Autoconverted: from quoted-printable to 8bit by delorie.com id k5DDYhD3001489 > -----Original Message----- > From: cygwin-owner@cygwin.com > [mailto:cygwin-owner@cygwin.com] On Behalf Of Frank Fesevur > Sent: Tuesday, June 13, 2006 5:35 AM > To: cygwin@cygwin.com > Subject: vim 7 gives error when editing /etc/hosts > > Hi, > > When I try to edit /etc/hosts with vim7, it gives this error: > E303: Unable to open swap file for "hosts", recovery impossible > > The file can be edited, but this never happened with 6.4 > > Regards, > Frank > vim appears to be unable to follow some links. The following steps lead to the above error for me, also. $ touch "c:\foo.txt" $ ln -s "c:\foo.txt" bar.txt $ vim bar.txt # vim reports the swap-file error On my computer, and I suspect on yours, /etc/hosts is a symbolic link to Windows 'hosts' file: $ ls -ln /etc/hosts lrwxrwxrwx 1 13558 545 37 Apr 4 18:11 /etc/hosts -> C:\WINDOWS\system32\drivers\etc\hosts Curiously, the link does not cause an error if it was created using "cygwin" syntax: $ ln -fs /c/foo.txt bar.txt # assumes that you've set the cygdrive prefix to "/" $ vim bar.txt # No swap-file error is reported. Until the problem code and its solution can be identified, you should be able to use this workaround. --- -- Unsubscribe info: http://cygwin.com/ml/#unsubscribe-simple Problem reports: http://cygwin.com/problems.html Documentation: http://cygwin.com/docs.html FAQ: http://cygwin.com/faq/