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Subject: RE: vim 7 gives error when editing /etc/hosts
Date: Tue, 13 Jun 2006 09:32:49 -0400
Message-ID: <C874DBE9D30B584587F8CD0EC34DA8BE01C6DAEC@EX00.idirect.net>
From: "Harig, Mark" <maharig AT idirect DOT net>
To: "Frank Fesevur" <ffes AT users DOT sourceforge DOT net>, <cygwin AT cygwin DOT com>
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> -----Original Message-----
> From: cygwin-owner AT cygwin DOT com 
> [mailto:cygwin-owner AT cygwin DOT com] On Behalf Of Frank Fesevur
> Sent: Tuesday, June 13, 2006 5:35 AM
> To: cygwin AT cygwin DOT 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.

---

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