Yesterday, I upgraded the Vim plugins on my Ubuntu Desktop using Vundle. Among the upgraded plugins, Ultrablog.vim was the only one that didn’t run smoothly on my installed version of Vim.

Right after I issued the command vi on the terminal, I got the following error message.

$ vi
Error detected while processing /home/owner/.vim/bundle/UltraBlog.vim/plugin/UltraBlog.vim:
line  253:
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<string>", line 7, in <module>
  File "/home/owner/.vim/bundle/UltraBlog.vim/plugin/ultrablog/commands.py", line 8, in <module>
from db import *
  File "/home/owner/.vim/bundle/UltraBlog.vim/plugin/ultrablog/db.py", line 181, in <module>
u.ub_echoerr(msg)
  File "/home/owner/.vim/bundle/UltraBlog.vim/plugin/ultrablog/util.py", line 623, in ub_echoerr
vim.command(cmd)
vim.error: Vim(echoerr):Missing key 'xmlrpc_uri' in the settings list of UltraBlog.vim !
Press ENTER or type command to continue

Before entering the standard startup screen, I received another complaint from the editor.

Error detected while processing BufEnter Auto commands for "*":
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<string>", line 1, in <module>
NameError: name '__ub_on_buffer_enter' is not defined
Press ENTER or type command to continue

I tried opening a file, and was blamed by the program again!

"foo.txt" 123L, 456C
Error detected while processing BufEnter Auto commands for "*":
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<string>", line 1, in <module>
NameError: name '__ub_on_buffer_enter' is not defined
Press ENTER or type command to continue

I split my window into half by the editor command :new and captured the content of another error message. I found that it’s the same as the second message.

I moved the cursor across windows, and got similar message, but repeated a few times.

Error detected while processing BufEnter Auto commands for "*":
Traceback (most recent call last):
Press ENTER or type command to continue
Error detected while processing BufEnter Auto commands for "*":
  File "<string>", line 1, in <module>
Press ENTER or type command to continue
Error detected while processing BufEnter Auto commands for "*":
NameError: name '__ub_on_buffer_enter' is not defined
Press ENTER or type command to continue

I was annoyed by the error, and decided to fix it. From the alphabets “ub” in __ub_on_buffer_enter in the error messages, I believed that the recently updated plugin UltraBlog.vim was the cause of my problem. I searched Google for “vim ultrablog”. To narrow down the search, I only viewed the web pages which were updated in the past year. I found a blog post on the automatic completion of the category of posts.¹ The post was written by Leigh, the creator of UltraBlog.vim. There’s a code block in the middle, and experienced Vim users will notice that it’s the suggested configurations in one’s own VIMRC. Comparing the settings for the previous version of UltraBlog.vim in my VIMRC with his, I realized that I didn’t include the line containing ‘xmlrpc_uri’. I copied the whole line in his code block to my VIMRC, and restarted Vim again. Finally, Vim didn’t show me errors anymore.

Looking back, I regret not reading the first error message…

Like Leigh, I’ve switched from WordPress to Octopress three months ago.² His migration motivated me to follow his suit.³ For the detailed practical advantages of Octopress over WordPress, you may refer to my about page.

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