vim says "No protocol specified" and I have no idea what it means

I have a few files I use to script my backups. I've been tweaking
them as usual. Suddenly vim is acting very strange, and the files are
misbehaving.

The main symptoms are the message "No protocol specified" which
appears both on the editing session (with a different background) and
on the command-line.

For instance, this is cut-and-pasted directly from my terminal session:

root@treat:~/scripts# vim -i NONE -u NONE err
No protocol specified
No protocol specified
No protocol specified
root@treat:~/scripts#

The same phrase seems to appear randomly over the editing session. It
does not appear to be part of the text. I'd have to use a screen shot
to show it, which I'll do if need be. The -i and -u options are just
there for debugging.

I did not modify the file during the session, and its contents do not
appear to be the problem. Here's a dump:

root@treat:~/scripts# od -t x1c err
0000000 20 20 74 68 65 6e 0a 20 20 20 20 65 63 68 6f 20
t h e n \n e c h o
0000020 55 6e 69 64 69 65 6e 74 69 66 69 65 64 20 73 79
U n i d i e n t i f i e d s y
0000040 73 74 65 6d 2e 20 20 43 61 6e 6e 6f 74 20 63 6f
s t e m . C a n n o t c o
0000060 6e 74 69 6e 75 65 2e 0a 20 20 20 20 65 78 69 74
n t i n u e . \n e x i t
0000100 20 31 0a 20 20 65 6c 69 66 20 5b 20 21 20 2d 66
1 \n e l i f [ ! - f
0000120 20 2f 72 6f 6f 74 2f 73 63 72 69 70 74 73 2f 62
/ r o o t / s c r i p t s / b
0000140 6b 24 6d 65 2e 73 68 20 5d 0a
k $ m e . s h ] \n
0000152
root@treat:~/scripts#

I've been using vim for a *long* time and have never seen this. What
in the world happened to my vim?

--
Kevin O'Gorman, PhD

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