Vim help, tags, sudo

[jeremy bentham <dnw@eskimo.com>]

This could be a vim question, but since sudo's involved I'll
start here.

I am thrashing about, trying to get wheezy going on a new machine
(well, new to me.  I think the huckster term-of-art is
"pre-owned":  I had the pleasure of wiping dollarbill inc's crap
off it).

Anyway, I got vim installed, opened it up and wanted to look at
the docs for something.

:h <whatever>

resulted in, "E433:  no tags file"

I've been using vim for a long time, upgrading as time went
along, and I'd never thought about the mechanics of help.  So I
had to go looking.

Ctags wasn't installed, so I got that and ran it on the vim doc
directory.  It didn't make a tags file, but something that looks
like a config file for who-knows-what.

So I looked at another machine, decided that the doc directories
were sufficiently similar (vim 7.1 versus 7.3) and copied the
tags file over.  Kludgy, I know, and generally a Bad Idea (tm).
But I figured any damage would be limited to something already
broken....

It looks like a permissions problem, but I can't see any
difference in that area between the machines.  (Admittedly, I'm
comparing Lenny to Wheezy, but it this instance should that make
any difference?)

Now I have help with "sudo vi", but not as a normal user.

I'm enquiring here because I'm wondering, is this symptomatic of
some other problem that's going to leap on me from a Very High
Place?

Ok, I want my vim docs too! I think vim would sing, if you found
the right configuration, and I keep learning stuff, control-]'ing
about the help files.  Having to keep a root session around and
switching to it just wouldn't be the same.  And I wouldn't know
why it's not working the way it's supposed to.

-- 
 Dave Williams    |  "Awk!" he sed, bashfully.  "Do I _have_ to
 dnw@eskimo.com   |  learn perl?"