problem with VI

[garry1624]

I am trying to VI a 9 MB file and it comes back with
this error on AIX uing vi editor

ex: 0602-101 Out of memory saving lines for undo.

Statictics show there is more than 100 MB free real memory,
no paging, enough free space on the file system in /var

What could it be ?

I even tried to copy the file to a different idle server
with lots of free space but thesame problem.

 

[bi]

vi should be able to handle a file up to 64 MB. I wonder if the file is exceeding some other vi limitation? This site lists some of those limitations:

http://publib16.boulder.ibm.com/doc_link/en_US/a_doc_lib/cmds/aixcmds6/vi.htm

You could try using split to split the file into smaller pieces (split -b 1m filename), do your editing, then cat the pieces back into one file again. Kind of kludgey, though.

 

[Gudlyf]

How much space do you have available in /tmp? Are you sure /var/tmp isn't a symlink to somewhere else that has a full filesystem? I've seen this happen in some places.

 

[scottrisi]

You can download the edittor "vile" from
ftp://invisible-island.net/vile

I've used this to edit some very large files. Feels like vi only better

 

[visvid]

Best bet as above is to check /var/tmp as vi writes t here

 

[jonoheap]

If the problem is related to the amount of free space in the /var/tmp area, you can change the default directory that vi writes it temp files to. Change it so it points to an area with more space.
Create a file .exrc in the account's home area and add the following line.
directory=/tmp