1

Hi! Fedora CoreOS comes with nano as default text editor.

$ rpm -q nano-default-editor
nano-default-editor-6.0-2.fc36.noarch
$ echo $EDITOR
/usr/bin/nano

is it possible to replace that with vim?

$ sudo rpm-ostree uninstall nano-default-editor                                                                                                                       
error: Package/capability 'nano-default-editor' is not currently requested
$ sudo rpm-ostree install vim-default-editor                                                                                                                        
Checking out tree 977c43d... done
Enabled rpm-md repositories: fedora-cisco-openh264 fedora-modular updates-modular updates fedora updates-archive
Importing rpm-md... done
rpm-md repo 'fedora-cisco-openh264' (cached); generated: 2022-04-07T16:52:38Z solvables: 4
rpm-md repo 'fedora-modular' (cached); generated: 2022-05-04T21:12:01Z solvables: 825
rpm-md repo 'updates-modular' (cached); generated: 2022-06-14T02:11:42Z solvables: 1155
rpm-md repo 'updates' (cached); generated: 2022-07-04T01:12:42Z solvables: 15500
rpm-md repo 'fedora' (cached); generated: 2022-05-04T21:16:11Z solvables: 67992
rpm-md repo 'updates-archive' (cached); generated: 2022-07-04T02:32:07Z solvables: 18129
Resolving dependencies... done
error: Could not depsolve transaction; 1 problem detected:
 Problem: conflicting requests
  - package nano-default-editor-6.0-2.fc36.noarch conflicts with system-default-editor provided by vim-default-editor-2:8.2.5172-1.fc36.noarch
  - package vim-default-editor-2:8.2.5172-1.fc36.noarch conflicts with system-default-editor provided by nano-default-editor-6.0-2.fc36.noarch
  - package nano-default-editor-6.0-2.fc36.noarch conflicts with system-default-editor provided by vim-default-editor-2:8.2.4621-1.fc36.noarch
  - package vim-default-editor-2:8.2.4621-1.fc36.noarch conflicts with system-default-editor provided by nano-default-editor-6.0-2.fc36.noarch
  - package nano-default-editor-6.0-2.fc36.noarch conflicts with system-default-editor provided by vim-default-editor-2:8.2.4845-1.fc36.noarch
  - package vim-default-editor-2:8.2.4845-1.fc36.noarch conflicts with system-default-editor provided by nano-default-editor-6.0-2.fc36.noarch

Cheers

2

Hi, we have some docs on this here.

3 Likes
3

I do remember some joke, although I don’t remember it exactly, about a sysadmin logging into a Debian box and finding there was no vi, only nano, and trying to figure out how to exit it. Fedora, like many others, becomes more and more like Windows. I guess that RH figures it’s for the best, and as they’re a billion dollar company, they may be right–I used to complain about such things, but now I feel like the old man yelling at the cloud. Sigh.

1 Like
4

hmm so I put EDITOR=vi to avoid installing any extra package, it works almost perfectly.

When running sudo systemctl edit it still run nano.

5

You could use sudo -E

On regular F36,I use neovim so I ended up adding the below to the sudoers file
Defaults env_keep += "EDITOR"

2 Likes
6

ok i go with

storage:
  files:
    - path: /etc/profile.d/zz-default-editor.sh
      overwrite: true
      contents:
        inline: |
          export EDITOR=vi
    - path: /etc/sudoers.d/editor
      overwrite: true
      contents:
        inline: |
          Defaults env_keep += "EDITOR"
      mode: 0440

and the hope to see vi instead of nano everywhere.
Thanks!

1 Like
7

On most systems you can replace the default editor.
dnf swap nano-default-editor vim-default-editor --allowerasing which would remove nano and install vim as the default editor.

1 Like
8

Note that Fedora CoreOS doesn’t have dnf.

1 Like
9

Have not worked with CoreOS, so did not know that.

But it does have rpm correct.?
Maybe that could then be done with a similar rpm command to remove the nano default editor and install the vim default editor.

1 Like
10

This was super useful, thank you very much!

11

But it does have rpm correct.?

Sorry to necrobump but I found this thread via search and the solution did not work for me as it leaves nano installed. nano is a base package so rpm-ostree needs to override and remove to actually get rid of it:
rpm-ostree override remove nano nano-default-editor --install=vim-default-editor

After reboot:
$ rpm -q nano
package nano is not installed

1 Like
12

The rpm command is read-only afaik. You need ostree or rpm-ostree to edit things.

13

Added howto-candidate