Howto Change Default editor in Debian Etch

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May 212007
 

    By Default Debian Etch Provides the nano editor you need to follow this procedure.In this example i want to use vi editor as my default editor

    Administrators who wish to change the default editor for all users will have to update the alternatives system using:

    # update-alternatives --config editor

    Once you enter it opens available editor options from your server you should see similar to the following screen here i have selected option4 for vi editor

    If you are an user wishing to change the default editor can define the environment variable EDITOR by introducing the following lines in their own profiles

    EDITOR=vi
    export EDITOR
    alias editor=$EDITOR

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       Posted by at 7:10 am
      • http://blog.teledyn.com mrG

        The profile advice does not appear to work in either Etch or Ubuntu; I have .bash_profile containing the EDITOR=vim.tiny;export and alias lines as above, I even created a ~/bin/editor symlink! But I still get nano :(

      • krp

        I had the same problem I put ” export EDITOR= ” in .bashrc

      • Sourav Mohanty

        Thnks for the Solution…

      • GGBce

        Thank you for your help, but I think that I make the same mistak than other people in comment. Changing EDITOR will not solve 100% the problem. Debian based solution (debian, ubuntu, …) use the “alternatives” to create base aliases. If you update the EDITOR, this will update the value for something called the “editor”. If you try to type :­­>vi myfile.txt and it’s not the VIM Editor… it because you don’t update the vi alias also. You need to do that also:

        update-alternatives –config vi

        Every “alternatives” aliases are located in /etc/alternatives. update-alternatives –config editor will solve the problem if you was typing :>editor myfile.txt

        Then you need to these commands for full vi support:
        update-alternatives –config editor
        update-alternatives –config vi
        update-alternatives –config view
        …

      • arash

        You need to export VISUAL to set the editor for user, not EDITOR.
        export VISUAL=vim works

      • http://littleguy.myid.net/ littleguy

        Excellent solution, thank you!

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