Nvi saved the file sudoers.tmp

Have you ever seen a message like this?

From:     Nvi recovery program 
Subject:  Nvi saved the file sudoers.tmp
Date:     November 3, 2013 6:48:00 PM EST
To:       root@slocum.example.org
Reply-To: root@slocum.example.org

On Thu Jul 25 18:55:42 2013, the user root was editing a
file named /usr/local/etc/sudoers.tmp on the machine
slocum.unixathome.org, when it was saved for recovery. You
can recover most, if not all, of the changes to this file
using the -r option to vi:

	vi -r /usr/local/etc/sudoers.tmp

I got these repeatedly, after each boot. I’d go and check for /usr/local/etc/sudoers.tmp and it did not exist.

The problem is I didn’t understand how vi recovery works.

The files in question are in the /var/tmp/vi.recover/ directory.

If you issue the command in question, you will see the recovered file. If you save, you’ll save to /usr/local/etc/sudoers.tmp

If you want the recovered file, you’ll want to do something more, but that’s outside scope for this post.

If you do not want the recovered file, issue the command mentioned above, then use this command to exit without saving:

:q!

I hope this stops that message…