I’ve  never got to grips with using ‘vi’ to edit files from the command line. So one of the first things I need to do is configure the nano/pico text editor so I can properly edit and save out files. Here’s a nice and simple howto get nano running on a FreeBSD server.

Sudo to root and then execute the following command:

  1. cd /usr/ports/editors/nano && make install clean

Thats it.

If you have people who can’t stop themselves typing ‘pico’ to bring up the text editor then you can symlink to the new nano binary as follows:

  1. ln -s /usr/local/bin/nano /usr/local/bin/pico
  2. rehash
  3. pico

Job done!