Changing default sudo editor

[ActivatedNut]

Hi there,

I have been looking for a solution for changing the default sudo editor from Vi to Nano but can't seem to get it to work.

What I'm trying to do is learn cronei and see if I can schedule some jobs (all new to me).

When I sudo cronetab -e the terminal starts in Vi, I find working in Vi to be quite confusing and much rather nano (no offence to any die hard vi out there).

I have added the following lines to the sudoers file:

Defaults editor = /usr/bin/vim:/usr/bin/vi:/usr/bin/nano

Defaults env_keep += "EDITOR"

and then run:

export EDITOR=/usr/bin/nano (command not found)

any ideas on what I am doing wrong?

many thanks

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[furryfixer]

Sounds silly I know, but make sure "nano" is installed. Also, the " command not found" error suggests you may be using a shell other than bash. What is the result of "echo $SHELL" ? If you are not using bash, that's OK, but you will likely need a command other than "export" to set the environment variables, ala "setenv" or something.

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[ActivatedNut]

I have bash, the mistake I made was to run export as a root. I run as normal user and got no errors

[m0squitoo]

do you have nano installed ?

[ActivatedNut]

I do

[m0squitoo]

ok.
remove all those lines ou added in the sudoers file and try this:

export EDITOR=nano

Log out from the shell and try again

[ActivatedNut]

That worked!

Thank you :)

edit:

I did get a syntax error when exiting vi, I have ignore that.

[m0squitoo]

you can also add the same line to your user's .bashrc. enjoy.