Well, if you have SSH access, you could just edit those files with Emacs anyway. It has support for remote files (via TRAMP) out of the box.

Or just FUSE + sshfs, and any editor that you have locally. :-P

Well, sure, but then I'd just use vim like a sane person.

They usually have one of the many clones of vi, installed as vi. Very few use actual vi, because for many years it was out-of-bounds because it used AT&T code from ed.

Interesting. What's the easiest way to check which vi binary I have?

  $ update-alternatives --display vi
  vi - auto mode
    link currently points to /usr/bin/vim.gtk
  ...

Or you could brute force it:

  $ ll $(which vi)
  lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 20 May 16 17:14 /usr/bin/vi -> /etc/alternatives/vi*
  $ ll /etc/alternatives/vi
  lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 16 May 17 06:07 /etc/alternatives/vi -> /usr/bin/vim.gtk*
  $ ll /usr/bin/vim.gtk 
  -rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 2391176 Apr  2 03:18 /usr/bin/vim.gtk*

vim.gtk is likely coded to behave differently depending on how it was invoked, as vim or vi for example.

Yeah, I meant whatever generic vi-alike is installed instead of vim.

I encounter vi on a production Solaris 10 box at my current consulting gig.

I can access the box from other hosts with tramp. I believe that firewall rules will be changed to restrict many production SSH connections to be outbound, which might signal the end of that use case(?)

Other editors found on the production box: ed, xedit (X Consortium).