Yes, that was indeed the problem. Thanks!. >This may not help at all, but then again it may.. >Anyway, I use vim as my default editor, and I had a similar problem >writing .viminfo (where vim stores info like command history, and >bookmarks). The problem was that the file was created during a sudo >session, and therefore root owned. So, if the backup file (or whatever >it is) is root owned, you might need to chmod it before you can access >it.