UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

Hi,

Whenever I run crontab -e from my remote terminal logged onto a SunOS 5.6 machine I get this:

Code:

root@beauvert:~> crontab -e
3495

-----

I think I have to set the terminal/editor. These are my environment variables:

Code:

root@beauvert:~> set
EDITOR  vi
PATH    /usr/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/local/bin
addsuffix       
argv    ()
cwd     /
dirstack        /
echo_style      bsd
edit    
editor  
gid     1
group   daemon
history 10
home    /
mohit   
owd     
path    (/usr/sbin /usr/bin)
prompt  %n@%m:%c> 
prompt2 %R? 
prompt3 CORRECT>%R (y|n|e|a)? 
shell   /usr/local/bin/tcsh
shlvl   1
status  0
sun     
tcsh    6.07.02
term    xterm
terminal        
tty     
ttyl    
uid     0
user    root
version tcsh 6.07.02 (Astron) 1996-10-27 (sparc-sun-solaris) options 8b,nls,dl,al,rh
vi      
xterm

-----

I do not know how to set which variables accordingly. Can someone help me?
As well, I seem to accidently have created an envionrment variable named mohit. How do I remove it?

Thanks!

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It does look like crontab -e is putting you into ed(1) rather than vi and the usual fix is to set EDITOR to equal vi, suggest you ensure that when you type vi at the promp you do actually get vi if not that needs fixing otherwise try switching shells, setting EDITOR and running vi and then crontab -e in the alternate shell: e.g.:

Code:

$ ksh
$ export EDITOR=vi
$ vi  
# Confirm you are in vi and not ed, then quit from vi, then run:
$ crontab -e

How you ended up running csh as root beats me. Try fixing this problem such that root runs with the shell assigned to root in /etc/passwd , and then things should behave normally.

Thanks for the answers. How do I remove a shell variable? I accidently added one called "mohit". How do I get rid of it?

You don't need to. Shell variables are harmless ...

If you insist and want to stay with tcsh, that should one of these, depending on if the variable is exported or not:

Code:

unset mohit
unsetenv mohit

By the way, EDITOR was probably not exported in your environment. That might explain why you were falling back to ed in your initial posting question.