When you want to use Vim's 'clientserver' features, you have this problem with non-GUI Vim under xterm: In Vim under xterm, 'servername' is disabled by default even when 'clientserver' feature is compiled into Vim. This is different from GUI gvim, where 'servername' is enabled by default. 1. If you want to enable 'servername' for vim/xterm, the first thing to check is whether vim has 'clientserver' feature compiled-in: do ':version' and check for +clientserver; or do