Message: vi/ex edited file recovered

Have you received mail with this subject: "vi/ex edited file recovered" ? This is what the mail messages look like:

From OMVS Mon Apr 29 13:58:50 1996
To: 1234567
Status: R
Subject: vi/ex edited file recovered.

Mon Apr 22 13:47:45 1996, the file

        NoFilename

that you were editing has been recovered.
You can retrieve most of your changes to this file
using the "-r" option or the ":recover" command of the
vi or ex editors. An easy way to do this is with the command

          vi -r NoFilename

This message is being sent to you because the exrecover command recovered text files from working files created by ex or vi. When ex or vi is invoked, it first creates these working files in a temporary directory so that it can recover the file being edited if any system errors occur or if the editor is otherwise terminated abnormally.

When vi is invoked, it first creates files in /tmp so that it can recover the file being edited if any system errors occur. When vi is invoked from OMVS, it creates its recovery files in /tmp but cannot continue.

The current default directory for temporary vi files (usually /tmp) may be implemented as a TFS. In this case, all vi's temporary files that the exrecover daemon uses for recovery would be gone after a system crash. The environment variable TMP_VI can contain a directory path name that can be specified by an administrator as an alternative location for these temporary files. See Using the TMP_VI environment variable for more information.

The exrecover command automatically recovers these files. By default, this command is started from the /etc/rc file. In /etc/rc you will see these lines:

# Invoke vi recovery
mkdir -m 777 /etc/recover
/usr/lib/exrecover

Every IPL, the /etc/rc script is run and the exrecover command is also run. exrecover goes through all the recovery files that were left by the ex or vi editors. These files have names that begin with VI; three of them are created for each vi command. exrecover creates directories in /etc/recover for each userid, puts the recovered files there, and sends the user mail telling what it did.