system/3624: Vi memory faults or unable to exit or save under certain conditions

[John Louis <openbsd@thetaworld.net>]

>Number:         3624
>Category:       system
>Synopsis:       Vi memory faults or unable to exit or save under certain conditions
>Confidential:   yes
>Severity:       non-critical
>Priority:       low
>Responsible:    bugs
>State:          open
>Quarter:        
>Keywords:       
>Date-Required:
>Class:          sw-bug
>Submitter-Id:   net
>Arrival-Date:   Thu Jan 01 21:20:01 GMT 2004
>Closed-Date:
>Last-Modified:
>Originator:     John Louis
>Release:        from the OpenBSD 3.4
>Organization:
Thetaworld Corporation
net
>Environment:
	
	System      : OpenBSD 3.4
	Architecture: OpenBSD.i386
	Machine     : i386
>Description:

We have many computers and /home system is mounted sometimes from
the NFS, but sometimes the local /home is used. Some other directories
might be mounted and might be used after they are extracted from
encrypted archives. In the vi setup file .nexrc I have the line
which says: set backup=N/home/louis/tmp/.backups/%

This enables that all files edited are backed up in that directory
as numbered version of the file. However, if that directory does
not exist and if the .nexrc file is exactly as this one under, the
vi cannot exit, cannot save the file and in some cases memory faults.
The condition is that /home/louis/tmp exists but /home/louis/tmp/.backups
does not. Even editing this bug has crashed after I tried to insert
the .nexrc and as vi tried to save the backup file, it crashed with
"Memory fault".

Content of my .nexrc:
---------------------

set autowrite
set redraw
set ignorecase
set tabstop=4
set shiftwidth=4
set autoindent
set autoprint
set beautify
set directory=/home/louis/tmp
set flash
set iclower
set nolist
set ruler
set showmatch
set showmode
set verbose
set cedit=+
set filec=\	
set backup=N/home/louis/tmp/.backups/%

Another error while using:
set backup=N/home/louis/tmp/.backups/%

is that all files edited together as a part of path:

vi some/path/to/the/file

cannot be saved with usual ":w" but only with ":w!", because the
backup mechanism is not able to provide the correct file name to
be saved. It could be good, if backup mechanism takes as "%" to be
the basename of the path, not the whole argument to "vi".

>How-To-Repeat:
	See above.
>Fix:
	The vi maintainer could be able to do it. 


>Release-Note:
>Audit-Trail:
>Unformatted: