Save a copy anywhere, get rights, overwrite original file with new file.
At least try that.
Nice of you to try to help, but I don’t think the people who post in this community are open to learning
WRONG
Arch is the only correct choice for an OS!!!
The community is not for Linux vs Windows or to humor Linux users. It is for dumping on Linux and it’s evangelists. I’m not going to let evangelists take over and trash it. This simple solution isn’t blaming the user (common evangelist BS), it isn’t making a false claim of Linux being ‘better’ for it. -So I see no harm in it and updooted it myself.
Removed by mod
But still not exactly like Windows!
Actually if you open a file you only have read access to in Windows, it will be exactly the same.
Save it to your desktop, get rights, copy it to its original location.
Save in /tmp
Easiest to rember trick I know of, but most people aren’t going to know it the first time they’re hit with it. lol
:w !sudo tee %
If you are in vim you can do this
Does it work in Helix as well?
It looks like you can run shell commands so it should be possible although the syntax may be a bit different. I haven’t used Helix.
Same shit happens with notepad in windows when editing the hosts file.
Notepad++ handles this gracefully
It offers to relaunch itself elevated without losing what you just edited.
And vim lets you elevate from inside it also.
This isn’t an OS issue at all.
You’re right, some AI chat told me it wouldn’t even open (by default). But at least it has a decent suggested solution in the error.
It’s so stupid that it can’t bring open an UAC prompt instead. Come on Windows you have a standardized way to elevate! Why don’t you use it?
Kudos for being willing to try it and see!
One very minor detail to note, in your test you weren’t actually overwriting the original file that you opened, but instead Notepad appended a
.txtto the filename, which is its default behavior, but you still got the same type or error because you didn’t have write permission for any file in that directory.
:w !sudo tee %Further research because you wouldn’t use sudo for something you don’t understand, right?
Right?!?
Modern versions of Vim warn about this. I guess, this might still be an annoyance with other editors?
If I recall it was when you opened it, and it was easily overlooked.
Ironically, I did this today when editing /etc/sudoers
This is why i love micro. When you tell it to save without sudo it asks to elevate your privileges.
I saw a one liner somewhere that lets you privesc the vi process you’re running from the vi command prompt
If you open it in code instead of vim or nano, then you can escalate the privileges if needed. It’s also easier to work with overall.
The bike meme is accurate in that it is you who did it to yourself
This description accurately describes the joke
Based on the community, I figured it was trying to imply that this is somehow Linux’s fault
This reply is a reasonable consideration
Based on the other replies to my original comment, it seems that I was right…
“ItS nOt LiNuX fAuLt!” - Common trope for the cult.
Thanks for the good example of how the cult blames the victim.
That very well may be a toxic trope in the Linux community, but in this specific case, I’d say it actually is the user’s fault.
Since you believe it is the operating system’s fault, I am curious how would you like the operating system to behave differently than this, when a user interacts with a file that they have read permissions but not write permissions? What should it do? The cool thing about Linux is that if you have a better idea, you are free to implement it and make it reality, and maybe even contribute it so that others can benefit too
Personally, I feel this behavior is already the best way to go, and why it works this way in all operating systems (at least that I am aware of). I understand that it makes it easy for the user to make this mistake, but I think it would be wrong to block the user from reading a file that they have permissions to read, obviously it would be wrong to allow them to write when they do not have permission, and at least (on Linux) they are given the option to save their changes to an alternative location that they have write permissions for, and warned when opening a readonly file for editing. Is there a better way?
What should it do?
Suggest a practical solution like saving to another directory where it can later be moved. (Notepad in Windows will do this)
That is a neat idea. You can implement this change in vim (or the editor of your choice), and open a pull request to contribute it if you wish! Another idea would be for the editor to automatically re-open itself with escalated privileges, maybe caching your changes to a temporary file so that you do not lose anything (could be dangerous if editing sensitive data that shouldn’t be written to a temporary location, or if you didn’t understand that you were opening a system file that you should be cautious in [but I can think of ways to mitigate that problem, too! Like just notifying the user that the editor needs to escalate the privilege]). I think it is important to realize that none of these solutions are the responsibility of the operating system itself, but instead the programs that you are choosing to use (Notepad/vim)
Modern versions of vim do warn the user up-front when they open a readonly file for editing, which I think is a nice solution, but sure, it doesn’t explicitly offer to save the file in your home directory for you. This is still always an option though (
:w ~/myfile), and if you don’t know how to use your text editor to save a file and need that level of hand-holding, then maybe you shouldn’t have sudo access in the first place?TBH, I rarely noticed the warning from nvim. I did get in the habit of learning when to use sudoedit though.
Sometimes I overlook the warning too, to be completely honest. But when that happens, I think “oh, my bad” and not “this is Linux’s fault!”
I’m sure that you can restyle the warning in vim so that it is more eye catching, but I’ve never tried.
We can’t very well honestly call Linux ‘new user friendly’ with issues like this that many of us are familiar with. Another legit attitude to have is: “what do you expect for free?”.
On which operating system can you write to a file that you do not have permissions to write to?
This exact same behavior also occurs on Windows lol
By default, a text editor in Windows will not even open the file for you to edit if you do not have the privilege already.
This is simply not true. Try it. I just did! File opens in notepad but when you save, you get an error. It does allow you to open the file without write permission because you have the option of saving it to a location where you do have permissions. Just like Linux 🙂
Ok, checked it and you’re right, contrary to what I read. It does suggest in the error on Windows to save it to your documents instead at least.
