edit a remote file with vim

Question

I'm trying to edit a remote file with vim 7.2 using this command ":e scp://username@host//home/oracle/filename.ksh". But I get this error "scp: not found". Then I placed the scp file in home/oracle. But still I get the same error. What am I missing?

Answer 1

Since Vim 6.x the netrw plugin is installed as a standard plugin. So you can edit files via ftp, rcp, scp or http.

For scp actions is useful to open the file as follows:

vim scp://[email protected]//path/to/document

You get a bunch of information on Vim tips pages.

Answer 2

Depending of your OS software configuration, you can alternately use fuse and sshfs in order to accomplish this.

---

Packaged as sshfs in most distributions, this makes possible for users (depending on your user permissions policy) to actually mount a ssh location somewhere in the local filesystem.

The command looks something like this (assuming you already installed sshfs):

sshfs <user>@<host>:<remote_location> <local_path>

An example:

sshfs [email protected]:/var/www /mnt/sshfsmounts/www

Doing that, you can safely edit remote files as if they made part of your local filesystem, using

vim /mnt/sshfsmounts/www/index.php

for example.

---

Some useful links here:

[1] - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SSHFS

[2] - http://fuse.sourceforge.net/sshfs.html

[3] - http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/8904

---

Be aware of the fact that permissions you will have on mounted ssh filesystem are those applied for the user specified inthe sshfs command, completed by permissions you have on the local file system for the mount point. This means you basically need to have write access on both the mount point and on the ssh host under specified sshfs user.