Weird problem with vi... "Not that many lines in buffer"

[Andrew Beattie]

In article <7652 at boring.cwi.nl> dik at cwi.nl (Dik T. Winter) writes:
>In article <508 at icus.islp.ny.us> lenny at icus.islp.ny.us (Lenny Tropiano) writes:
> > I just created this .signature file, and for some reason every time this
> > is in a file, and I do a "vi" of that file I get the following message...
> > 
> > ".signature" 4 lines of 300 characters Not that many lines in buffer
> > 
>Apparently you have a version of vi that automagically performs commands
>embedded in the first and last four lines of a file.
>
> > Lenny Tropiano             ICUS Software Systems         w: +1 (516) 582-5525
> > lenny at icus.islp.ny.us      Telex: 154232428 ICUS         h: +1 (516) 968-8576
>Here is the culprit              ^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Watch out! this is very dangerous!

I don't have this feature (bug!) or encription, so my syntax may be out but I
understand that if you edit /etc/passwd with the following entry in the 
required position:
alex:X2hoe79sie8qa:123:100:Some Person:/usr/al:
then vi will find ex: and encrypt (X) the file using the encrypted password
as a key.  You stand little chance of recovering!