Re: Can't write to ntfs file system

On Wed, Jan 4, 2012 at 2:25 PM, Charles Campbell <Charles.E.Campbell@nasa.gov> wrote:

Marty Fried wrote:

I agree.  That is why I believe that if someone is using root account for something, it is probably for maintenance, or to fix a problem.  It may be that the person has root access for maintenance, but is not in the sudo users file, and doesn't have time to set it up for a one-time use.

Nice philosophy, but: I suspect that due to the free nature of the various linux distros, there are quite a few "root" users who only barely know what they're doing.  Having a complex editor like Vim doing things (such as backups, changing permissions, changing ownership) isn't a good idea imho.  Such things should be done explicitly (ie. chmod,chgrp, chown, or by menu); requiring all the barely to somewhat competent root administrators to have mastered all the nuances of vim is naive.
Admittedly, I didn't go over all 83 hits I got with helpgrep in detail.

I guess I spoke somewhat out of ignorance; I wasn't aware that Vim did those things.  I don't even know how, and I'm not sure if I want to know.  :)

I use the explicit methods you mentioned. I'm a simple kind of guy, and I like things to be pretty modular, so I know what will happen.  When I use an editor, I only expect it to change the contents of the file.  It's nice that it allows me, after prompting, to save to a read-only file, and I appreciate it sometimes, but I wouldn't mind if it didn't.

 I'll admit that I'm somewhat torn in my opinions about protecting barely competent users from themselves.  Throughout my long experience with computers, that's mostly the way I learned, by destroying things.  I learned things like backing up, not assuming things when the consequences matter, etc.

Now, if it were Windows, maybe I would expect the handholding.  But I've messed up Windows in the past, too.  :)

Regards,

Marty Fried

--
You received this message from the "vim_use" maillist.
Do not top-post! Type your reply below the text you are replying to.
For more information, visit http://www.vim.org/maillist.php