You are repairing a minimal rescue system with almost no packages installed. Why is vi the editor an LPIC-1 candidate is expected to know?
LPIC-1 Exam 101-500, objective 103. GNU and Unix commands medium
Draft — not checked yet. This question was written from the published exam objectives and cites the clause it comes from, but nobody has yet read it against that clause and signed for it.
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The options
Correct Because a vi-compatible editor is effectively always present on a Unix-like system, so it is the one editor you can rely on finding.
Correct. POSIX specifies vi, and distributions ship it (often as vim-tiny, vim or busybox vi) even in minimal installs and rescue environments.
Not correct Because vi is the only editor that can write files owned by root.
Wrong. Any editor can write a root-owned file if the process has the necessary permissions. Ownership is a kernel matter, not an editor feature.
Not correct Because vi is the editor the $EDITOR variable is hard-coded to.
Wrong. $EDITOR is an ordinary environment variable that any user can set to nano, emacs or anything else. It often defaults to vi, but nothing is hard-coded.
Not correct Because only vi can edit files larger than the available RAM.
Wrong. vi loads its buffer like other editors and has no unique large-file capability; tools such as sed or split are what you reach for there.
Why
nano may be friendlier, but it is not guaranteed to be installed. vi is specified by POSIX and present on essentially every Unix-like system including rescue images and containers, which is why knowing insert mode, dd/yy/p, /search and :wq is a genuine survival skill.
Where this comes from
- Cited
- LPI exam objective 103.8
- What it says
- vi is the editor available on virtually every Linux system.
Practise this
Reading one question is not practice. The trainer will draw a set from objective 103 and space the ones you get wrong.