Fresh Vim install, Vim permission errors, Vundle not functional

Question

I have the following vim packages installed on Linux Mint Debian Edition:

vim
vim-common
vim-tiny
vim-runtime
vim-doc

I had the above packages installed before, and after installing Vundle (it was functional via instructions on http://github.com/gmarik/vundle) decided, to avoid plugin conflicts, to completely remove and reinstall all of the above vim packages/.vim folder, in order to fully utilize Vundle as a means to manage my plugins. In my file explorer, I can see that the folder created from git cloning ~/.vim and all inherited folders/files belong to root. This causes the following problems with Vundle:

First of all when I executed :BundleSearch query:

To further diagnose my problem, I tried adding a bundle manually into my vimrc:

Bundle 'scrooloose/nerdtree'

Using the exact same vimrc setup in the Vundle GitHub, it worked on the previous installation. Now when I attempt to :BundleInstall I get the following permission-based errors:

[140112 13:48:10] 

[140112 13:48:10] Bundle scrooloose/nerdtree

[140112 13:48:10] $ git clone --recursive 'https://github.com/scrooloose/nerdtree.git' '/home/ahqiao/.vim/bundle/nerdtree'

[140112 13:48:10] > fatal: could not create work tree dir '/home/ahqiao/.vim/bundle/nerdtree'.: Permission denied\00

[140112 13:48:11] 

[140112 13:48:11] Helptags:

[140112 13:48:11] :helptags /home/ahqiao/.vim/bundle/vundle/doc/

[140112 13:48:11] > Error running :helptags /home/ahqiao/.vim/bundle/vundle/doc/

[140112 13:48:11] Helptags: 1 bundles processed

Furthermore, my vimrc also contains the standard two lines for plugins:

filetype plugin on

set nocp

In the past, I have also had problems with :helptags not being able to access ~/.vim/doc because of permission so I have had to manually copy the help files into a non-root folder and point to that with :helptags.

How can I overcome these root problems? Vundle is really essential for me to manage the amount of plugins I require to code and keep track of.

Blemish

How are you cloning vundle and where are you putting it? Actually, how did you create ~/.vim directory? Can you show us the permissions on it? – Nonaggression

git clone github.com/gmarik/vundle.git ~/.vim/bundle/vundle And as stated before the clone worked on previous install. For some reason VIM is not happy about permissions of my /.vim directory – Blemish

If ~/.vim and all subdirs belong to root, why don't you chown to yourself? It seems that is how it should be in HOME, but it's unclear to me how it got that way in the first place. Are you saying that when you cloned Vundle this happened? – Nonaggression

after i uninstalled vim the first time, I deleted the entire /.vim directory, when I reinstalled the packages /.vim was not created (I am not sure if VIM does this automatically?) and thus the directory was created as a result of the git clone command (which I ran with normal permission terminal). Also note that my reinstall processes were done in synaptic with the "complete removal" options checked – Blemish

In general, things in your HOME directory should belong to your USER. You may have run sudo git clone ... when installing Vundle before or something else with sudo that created the directory but I don't think Vim would ever do that automatically. – Nonaggression

Answer 1

It's unclear to me how the owner of ~/.vim got set to root but Vundle will definitely have trouble updating packages if that is the case.

If I understand correctly, in that you now have Vim installed how you want it, I suggest redoing the customization process.

---

Move ~/.vim (for reference) and create the bundle directory where Vundle will be installed:

$ sudo mv ~/.vim ~/OLDvim
$ mkdir -p ~/.vim/bundle

This should now be an empty dir owned by your user.

Reinstall Vundle

$ git clone https://github.com/VundleVim/Vundle.vim.git ~/.vim/bundle/Vundle.vim

Make sure you have the required lines in your ~/.vimrc,

• open vim and
• run :BundleInstall

Once you got it working and you're happy with everything, you can rm -rf ~/OLDvim.

Nonaggression

Recursing through with chown (as in the above comment) appeared to fix my problems. Thanks bnjmn, would upvote you if I could. I'm pretty new here, so I really appreiciate your assistance – Blemish

This worked for me. Upvoted. Thanks for providing this solution! – Uund

This approach worked for me, but vundle install instructions are slightly different now. – Cedric

Answer 2

Changing the ownership of the .vim files to my username instead of root worked for me (did for all files recursively):

chown -R <username>:<username> .vim

Here's more info about chown.

Note: It seems like the reinstall answer would work too (though didn't end up trying it), but with the chown approach you don't have to do the reinstall steps.

Tatter

Answer 3

It's very late to answer, but this problem still occuring. I run into this problem and Here is how I solved it. First run the ( get the error while installing the Plugin)

    :helptags /home/ahqiao/.vim/bundle/vundle/doc/

It will show the Exact Error. In my Case it was Duplicate Entries found in two ale doc file ale-cpp.txt and ale-cpp.txt.

    Error: Duplicate Entries Found g:ale_cpp_flawfinder_executable
    Error: Duplicate Entries Found g:ale_c_flawfinder_executable

Just remove these entries or comment out and Install agin. Now it works fine.

Congregationalism

Answer 4

Also very late to answer, but in my case, changing the line:

call vundle#begin('$USERPROFILE/.vim/bundle') 

to

call vundle#begin('$HOME/.vim/bundle') 

corrected the problem. Apparently, $USERPROFILE was not defined, and so evaluated to root (/).

This may help someone....

Rotz

Answer 5

Uninstalling/Installing the offending plugin (vim-fugitive) fixed the error for me.

I was getting this error:

> Error running :helptags /Users/gigo6000/.vim/bundle/vim-fugitive/doc 

So I deleted the line:

Plugin 'tpope/vim-fugitive'

Run

:so %
:PluginClean
:PluginInstall

And that did the work.

Oleta