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I am SSHing into an Ubuntu machine where I use Bash as the shell. I used to be able to edit my ~/.vimrc file very easily. Now, whenever I try to write to it, I get a warning

E297 write error in swap file

and also after typing in text, I cannot save the changes. Vim tells me that

E667: Fsync failed.

In order to exit the file, I simply have to type the :q! (force quit command).

This also happens to my ~/.bashrc file, and any other ~/.file that I access. However, I can successfully edit files in any directory outside of /usr2/.

This is an NFS file system and ls -ld ~ outputs that I have rwx permissions on that directory, and that I am the owner of it:

drwxrwxrwx 9 my_name users ... /usr2/my_name

It is odd because I am the owner of the file and have reading and writing permissions:

ls -l ~/.vimrc
-rwxr----- 1 my_name users 172 Aug 18 14:18 /usr2/my_name/.vimrc

I also have only used 54% of my allotted disk space by my system admin, so it cannot be a disk space issue. I also cannot find any .vimrc.swp files.

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  • Are there perhaps permission problems with other directories? For instance, does ls -ld ~ show you correct permissions to your home directory itself?
    – filbranden ♦
    Aug 22, 2020 at 17:02
  • (Not the source of your problem, but note that I'd expect your .vimrc file shouldn't have the "execute" bit set... But that's just a minor hygiene issue, probably not really the source of the issue you're having.)
    – filbranden ♦
    Aug 22, 2020 at 17:04
  • See also :swapname which will tell you the name (and location) of the swap file for the file you're editing. What does :set directory? tell you? (That configures where swap files are supposed to be stored...)
    – filbranden ♦
    Aug 22, 2020 at 17:08
  • Hello @filbranden, I have rwx permissions on /usr2/my_name directory, as shown by the ls -ld ~ command. Running :swapname shows me that there actually is indeed a swap file in /usr2/my_name/.vimrc.swp. Runnnig :set directory? shows directory=.,~/tmp,/var/tmp,/tmp. Should I delete the swap file?
    – Connie Jash
    Aug 22, 2020 at 17:56
  • I'm wondering if this /usr2 directory is a weird filesystem... You can see that with df -Th ~ which will tell you the filesystem type. Please edit the question to add more information, it's hard to follow information from comments... (Also include the aforementioned ls -ld ~ output shen you edit the question...)
    – filbranden ♦
    Aug 22, 2020 at 18:00

1 Answer 1

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It turns out that I had installed a version control tool called "repo" on the home directory of the company computer (/usr2/user_name) that had a very small disk partition allocated to it by the system admin. It took up 5GB of space. I removed it and already had it installed in a different directory.

After the removal and freeing up of disk space, I was able to edit my ~/.vimrc and ~/.bashrc files that are in the home directory.

It also turns out that my company has a special tool for checking users disk quota, and running df command was not accurate enough (I had not used 54% of quota, I had used 100%). Pretty much, just make sure to have enough disk space available.

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