Not sure, but sometime after the end of April the whole swap/undo/backup
stuff quit working. It's almost as if a system configuration file
changed, but I don't know what. In any case, the changes here to vimrc
(~/.vimrc) gets things working even better:
* If the directory structure used for these files, at
~/.local/share/vim, are not present, they are created.
* If backups can be written, only the preferred location is made
available.
* If undo files can be written, only the preferred location is made
available.