For some reason, when I use vim as 'root' I get sporadic messages "no protocol specified" that show up on the console, in such a way that I think it's going to /dev/console.* It gets into the text I'm editing,* but isn't really there because ^L clears it.
Save for some abbreviations related to the account, there's no differrence between /root/.vimrc and the one in my home directory,* but only root sees this behavior.* Even strings(1) does not find that message in /usr/bin/vim.* It happens twice to the console* before vim takes over the window, and sporadically during editing.* I haven't seen any pattern to what I'm doing when it happens.