etc apt sources list E212 Can t open file for writing

Question

I am trying to edit sources list using vi editor but getting the following error while saving the file    etc apt sources list  E212  Can t open file for writing

User · Answer

I got this error when I used git rm on a file in a directory     I was in something like   gitRepo code newFeature  In newFeature there was only one file  I did a git rm on that file then tried to create a new file myNewFile using vi    Ubuntu showed me as still being inside the newFeature directory but actually git rm had removed the whole directory   I had to exit out of vi  navigate up one directory and then recreate the newFeature directory

User · Answer

You just need to access to Gemfile with root access  Before vi   command    sudo su -   then   vi

User · Answer

Or perhaps you are on a readonly mounted fs

User · Answer

That happens to me all the time  I open a root file for writing   Instead of losing all your changes and re-opening with sudo   See this demo of how to save those changes   One time Setup demo to create a root owned read only file for a lower user   sudo touch temp txt sudo chown root root temp txt sudo chmod 775 temp txt whoami el   First open the file as normal user   vi temp txt   Then make some changes to the file  it warns you its read only   Use this command    w  chmod 777     Then write the file    wq    The permissions are expanded  and the file is saved   You need the exclamation point because you are editing a root file as a lesser user   Explanation of what that command does   The  w means write the file   The bang means start interpreting as shell   chmod means change permissions  777 means full permissions everywhere   The percent means the current file name     It applies the change   And it ask if you want to re-load   Press  O  for  Ok    Don t reload or you ll lose your changes

User · Answer

For me there was was quite a simple solution  I was trying to edit create a file in a folder that didn t exist  As I was already in the folder I was trying to edit create a file in   i e  pwd folder file  and was typing   sudo vim folder file   and rather obviously it was looking for the folder in the folder and failing to save

User · Answer

change user to root  sodu su -   browse to etc  vi sudoers   look for root user in user priviledge section  you will get it like   root ALL  ALL ALL  ALL    make same entry for your user name  if you username is  myuser  then add  myuser ALL  ALL ALL  ALL   it will look like   root ALL  ALL ALL  ALL   myuser ALL  ALL ALL  ALL    save it  change root user to your user  now try the same where you were getting the sudoers issue

User · Answer

Try to connect as root and then edit file  This works for me

User · Answer

I referenced to Zsolt in level 2  I input     w  sudo tee    gt   dev null   and then in my situation  I still can t modify the file  so it prompted that add      so I input    q     then it works

User · Answer

because the dir is not exist  can use   mkdir -p  etc apt  to make the directory  then  wq

User · Answer

For some reason the file you are writing to cannot be created or overwritten  The reason could be that you do not have permission to write in the directory or the file name is not valid    Vim has a builtin help system  I just quoted what it says to  h E212   You might want to edit the file as a superuser as sudo vim FILE  Or if you don t want to leave your existing vim session  and now have proper sudo rights   you can issue    w  sudo tee    gt   dev null   Which will save the file   HTH

User · Answer

for me worked changing the filesystem from Read-Only before running vim   bash-3 2  mount -o remount rw

User · Answer

I got this error when my directory path is incorrect  ensure your directory names and path are correct

User · Answer

It might be possible that the file you are accessing has a swap copy  or swap version  already there in the same directory  Hence first see whether a hidden file exists or not   For example  see for the following type of files   system conf swp   By using the command   ls -a   And then  delete it using      rm  system conf swp   Usually  I recommend  to start using super user privileges using      sudo su

User · Answer

Pre-append your commands with sudo  For example  Instead of vim textfile txt  used sudo vim textfile txt  This will resolve the issue

User · Answer

change the permission for the other user for that type setfacl -m u username rw filename

[vi] /etc/apt/sources.list" E212: Can't open file for writing

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