Re: [Pan-users] Click on URL in a post??

[Duncan]

On Mon 16 Dec 2002 12:29, Eric Ortega posted as excerpted below:
[Eric Ortega..]
> > > I would assume that something happened when he typed 'vi' that was not
> > > cool.  /bin/vi (on most installations) is only dependent, at most,
> > > on libraries in /lib for good reason.
> >
[Duncan..]
> > I thought the same.  However, at least on Mdk, vi is a link to vim, which
> > requires libraries (perl based, IIRC from the error) in /usr.  
>
> This is why I suggested that you may not have realized that you could
> probably actually run "vi" itself by a command like '/bin/vi'.  Just 'vi'
> from a shell will probably attempt to run '/usr/bin/vi' first, which will
> then do the symlink thing, etc, etc.
>
> It would be incredibly bad of the Mandrake distribution to not provide
> a "real" copy of the old-school vi for just these sorts of occasions.
> In my Debian installation /bin/vi takes up 3.6 kB.  (or is that kiB or
> KiB or ??)

Both the /usr/bin and the /bin variations are simply symlinks to 
/etc/alternatives/ variations (uvi, vi, vim, view), which are further 
symlinks back to /usr/bin/vim-enhanced (view thru another symlink loop to vi, 
which links to /etc/alternatives/vi, which of course links to 
/usr/bin/vim-enhanced).

However, upon further investigation, there IS a /bin/vim-minimal that's an 
actual executable of 421.5 KB.  It's likely that it's stand-alone, or at 
least doesn't require anything on /usr.  However, that moniker does seem a 
bit less-than-intuitive. ... I just did an rpm -qi vim-minimal, as I 
remembered seeing it listed during a few of my urpmi update sessions, and 
confirmed that yes, "The vim-minimal package includes a minimal version of 
VIM, which is installed into /bin/vi for use when only the root partition is 
present."

Thanks.  I now know that for next time.  (Still, can't see putting that on a 
rescue floppy...  However, since the install CDs can be used for rescue, I 
assume they use that instead, and can afford the nearly half a meg.)

-- 
Duncan
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little
temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety." --
Benjamin Franklin