"Chad C. Walstrom" <chewie at wookimus.net> wrote:
>
> Jim Crumley wrote:
> > For example for text editors, a console capable text editor is a must,
> > even if the user themselves won't use it, recovery situations if X
> > breaks.
> 
> This is VERY important.  You need to be able to edit files on the root
> drive when in single user mode.  /usr may not be mounted, and therefore
> my favorite editor, vim, is not available as it resides in /usr/bin.  I
> must fall back on the only default editor that installs in /bin on
> Debian: ed.

I've tried to use /bin/vi without success.  At the size it is, I'm amazed
it even manages to write stuff to the screen!

[mike at 3po][~]$ ls -l /bin/vi
-rwxr-xr-x    1 root     root         3660 Nov 28 14:17 /bin/vi

> I believe elvis-tiny does install in /bin, but it cannot be distributed
> as a "base" package because it's not exactly cross-platform. *sigh*

I think nano is the most `intuitive' of the editors these days (at least
for folks familiar with DOS editors of ages past).  I'm always happy when
my Home and End keys jump to the beginning and end of lines ;-)  It runs
about the same size as elvis-tiny, though I suspect it's probably just as
portable..

elvis-tiny is probably more powerful, though I suspect that when your /usr
partition is hosed, you're not too concerned about those extra features
(maybe you are, but I'm usually just trying to fix things like /etc/fstab
and /etc/lilo.conf..)

[mike at 3po][~]$ ls -l /bin/elvis-tiny /usr/bin/nano 
-rwxr-xr-x    1 root     root        67436 Nov 28 14:17 /bin/elvis-tiny
-rwxr-xr-x    1 root     root        69260 Nov 27 04:33 /usr/bin/nano

both of those programs are dynamically linked against libncurses.so.5, but
that file shows up in /lib on Debian systems.

After having to restore a system that lost it's only hard drive, I also
really wish netcat was put on the root filesystem, but I don't know how
often people need that (and I had to boot off a recovery CD anyway..)

-- 
 _  _  _  _ _  ___    _ _  _  ___ _ _  __   Why do we wash bath towels?
/ \/ \(_)| ' // ._\  / - \(_)/ ./| ' /(__   Aren't we clean when we use
\_||_/|_||_|_\\___/  \_-_/|_|\__\|_|_\ __)  them?
[ Mike Hicks | http://umn.edu/~hick0088/ | mailto:hick0088 at tc.umn.edu ]
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