bug#16154: Emacs crashes if $HOME isn't writable

[Reinhard Kotucha]

Hi,
when I do (as root)

   su nobody
   VISUAL=/usr/local/bin/emacs-24.3 crontab -e

Emacs says

   Creating directory: permission denied, //.emacs.d/

and refuses to do anything useful.  It's on purpose that user 'nobody'
doesn't have a writable HOME directory.

My current workaround is to put the lines

  if [[ ${LOGNAME} == 'nobody' ]]; then
    EDITOR=vim
  else
    EDITOR=emacs
  fi
 
into /etc/bashrc.

It would be better if Emacs can be used even if the HOME directory
isn't writable.  

vim allows me to edit the crontab and issues a warning 

  E138: Can't write viminfo file /.viminfo!

afterwards end but emacs refuses to do anything useful if $HOME isn't
writable. 

Regards,
  Reinhard

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Reinhard Kotucha                                      Phone: +49-511-3373112
Marschnerstr. 25
D-30167 Hannover                              mailto:reinhard.kotucha@web.de
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