vim 8.0 e353: nothing in register "

Question

I'm using vim version 8.0.1453 on Ubuntu 18.04 Server and getting error e353: nothing in register " always when I try to paste yanked text after closing and reopening the file. Yanking and pasting inside the same file works as long as I don't close the file. After reopening the file I tried to run :reg but it returns an empty list of registers.

I'm using vim inside tmux and I have another system with the exact same vim and tmux versions and everything works. I have deleted my .vimrc and .vim folder to isolate the problem.

I have already tried all suggestions that I could find using Google, but nothing seems to help. I have uninstalled all vim versions and reinstalled vim from the ubuntu repository. I also tried and it turns out that this works in neovim but not regular vim.

Answer 1

Check that your ~/.viminfo file is properly configured and have the right permissions.

That's the file where Vim saves registers at the end of an editing session, so if it can't write to it, it won't be able to restore the registers when starting a new instance.

See also :set viminfo? and :help 'viminfo' for the setting on what gets saved and how much gets saved to the ~/.viminfo file, there are limits there that could be causing an issue similar to the one you described.