Ed isn't something which many people use. It's installed here because it can be used by the patch program if you encounter an ed-based patch file. This happens rarely because diff-based patches are preferred these days. This package requires its patch to be applied before you can install it. This patch fixes a symlink vulnerability in ed. The ed executable creates files in /tmp with predictable names. By using various symlink attacks, it is possible to have ed write to files it should not, change the permissions of files, etc. Apply the patch: patch -Np1 -i ../ed-&ed-patch-version;.patch Prepare Ed to be compiled: ./configure --prefix=/usr Continue with compiling the package: make And finish off installing the package: make install We need to move the Ed binaries to the /bin directory so they may be used in the event that the /usr partition is unavailable. mv /usr/bin/{ed,red} /bin