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myNewAccount
Asked: 2020-04-30 14:29:52 +0800 CST

When root opens crontab Vim is used although Nano is set as the default editor. Why might this be?

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Environment: CentOS 8

Question: When I enter sudo crontab -e it opens in Vim. However Nano is set as the default editor and for every other type of file it is used as expected. Why might this be? Is there a way around this?

Background: I followed these steps to make Nano the default editor.

# nano /root/.bashrc

I added these lines and saved the file.

export EDITOR='nano'
export VISUAL='nano'

This is what the entire file consists of.

# .bashrc

# User specific aliases and functions

alias rm='rm -i'
alias cp='cp -i'
alias mv='mv -i'

# Source global definitions
if [ -f /etc/bashrc ]; then
        . /etc/bashrc
fi

export EDITOR='nano'
export VISUAL='nano'

I used this command to make the change active.

# source /root/.bashrc
linux cron vim sudo nano

1 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    /root/.bashrc is executed only if a shell is started under the root account. Executing a command with sudo usually does not invoke a shell so the file is not used.

    sudo would keep the environment variable EDITOR if it is set for the calling user. So that is the solution to your problem:

    EDITOR='nano' sudo crontab -e
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