I created a custom syntax file, and but none of the files in $VIMRUNTIME seem to load. I followed these pieces of the documentation:

• http://vimdoc.sourceforge.net/htmldoc/filetype.html#new-filetype
• http://vimdoc.sourceforge.net/htmldoc/syntax.html#mysyntaxfile

When I do

:echo &runtimepath

I get:

/home/durron597/.vim,/usr/share/vim/vimfiles,/usr/share/vim/vim73,/usr/share/vim/vimfiles/after,/home/durron597/.vim/after 

However, if I open a file with vim -D, here's the listed files as I type f:

/etc/vimrc
/home/durron597/.vimrc
/usr/share/vim/vim73/plugin/getscriptPlugin.vim
/usr/share/vim/vim73/plugin/gzip.vim
/usr/share/vim/vim73/plugin/matchparen.vim
/usr/share/vim/vim73/plugin/netrwPlugin.vim
/usr/share/vim/vim73/plugin/rrhelper.vim
/usr/share/vim/vim73/plugin/spellfile.vim
/usr/share/vim/vim73/plugin/tarPlugin.vim
/usr/share/vim/vim73/plugin/tohtml.vim
/usr/share/vim/vim73/plugin/vimballPlugin.vim
/usr/share/vim/vim73/plugin/zipPlugin.vim

Here's the output of ls -lR

durron597@Durron597 ~/.vim
$ ls -lR
.:
total 0
drwxr-xr-x+ 1 durron597 None 0 Jun  3 11:06 ftdetect
drwxr-xr-x+ 1 durron597 None 0 Jun  3 11:06 syntax

./ftdetect:
total 1.0K
-rw-r--r-- 1 durron597 None 45 Jun  3 11:06 mytype.vim

./syntax:
total 4.0K
-rw-r--r-- 1 durron597 None 740 Jun  3 11:06 mytype.vim

The exact exact paths are:

/home/durron597/.vim/ftdetect/mytype.vim
/home/durron597/.vim/syntax/mytype.vim

Note: the problem is that these files don't seem to be loaded at all, not that these files have internal mistakes

Output of :filetype

filetype detection:ON  plugin:ON  indent:OFF

Edit 3: No, really, the files are in the right place:

$ find /home -name '*.vim'
/home/durron597/.vim
/home/durron597/.vim/ftdetect/fix.vim
/home/durron597/.vim/syntax/fix.vim