On Mon, 2006-03-27 at 00:27 -0800, Khoa Ton wrote:
On Sun, 2006-03-26 at 12:43 +0100, Ron Yorston wrote:
> Khoa Ton wrote:
> >I'm using vi in the xterm Terminal console in FC5 Gnome Desktop.
> >When I'm scrolling down in a large file (/etc/passwd for example),
> >the last line doesn't properly clear, remnant text of the previous
> >line is left on the last line.
>
> I'm seeing similar behaviour, but with gnome-terminal. I've only
> had a quick look using an xterm but that seems to be OK.
Yes, Ron is right. My mistake thinking that Gnome Terminal (2.14.0)
was xterm. Xterm does not exhibit this problem.
Curiously, trying this again today with Gnome Terminal, I did not
see the problem. When the problem DOES NOT occur on Gnome Terminal,
I see the lower right cursor location numbers. When I don't see
these numbers is when the remnants remain.
Okay, here's the quick recap and workaround to the problem of
"VI editor in Gnome Terminal leaves text remnants on scroll"
/bin/vi exhibits the problem with Gnome Terminal, but not
xterm or the console window (ALT-F1 etc...).
/usr/bin/vim does not exhibit this problem.
The file /etc/profile.d/vim.sh runs on login and sets the alias
vi=vim for normal users, but NOT for root.
Hence, when the root user uses vi, he gets /bin/vi, which
has the text remnant problem with Gnome Terminal. When a
normal user uses vi, he gets /usr/bin/vim, which has no
problems with Gnome Terminal.
The workaround here would be to set an alias in root's .bashrc
file to use /usr/bin/vim when vi is called. As far as I know,
vim is more secure than vi and should be safer to run as root.
Khoa