Linux setup a Concurrent Versioning System (CVS) howto

by Vivek Gite on June 7, 2006 · 8 comments

Q. I am planning to use Concurrent Versioning System. I am using both Red Hat and Fedora Linux. How do I setup a CVS server?

A. Concurrent Versioning System (CVS) a widely used version control system for software development or data archiving solutions.

From the wiki page, "CVS keeps track of all work and all changes in a set of files, typically the implementation of a software project, and allows several (potentially widely separated) developers to collaborate".

CVS Configuration - Install CVS

Use rpm or up2date or yum command to install cvs:# rpm -ivh cvs*OR# up2date cvsOR# yum install cvsCreate a CVS user# useradd cvs
# passwd cvs
Above command will create a user cvs and group cvs with /home/cvs home directory.

Configure CVS

Open /etc/profile and append following line:# vi /etc/profileAppend following line:export CVSROOT=/home/cvsSave the file and exit to shell promot.

Make sure your /etc/xinetd.d/cvs looks as follows:# less /etc/xinetd.d/cvsOutput:

service cvspserver
{
       disable            = no
       socket_type    = stream
       wait                = no
       user                = cvs
       group              = cvs
       log_type          = FILE /var/log/cvspserver
       protocol          = tcp
       env                 = '$HOME=/home/cvsroot'
       bind                = 192.168.1.100
       log_on_failure  += USERID
       port                = 2401
       server             = /usr/bin/cvs
       server_args     = -f --allow-root=/home/cvsroot pserver
}

Note: Replace 192.168.1.100 with your actual server IP address.

Restart xinetd:# service xinetd restartAdd users to this group (see this howto for more info)# adduser username -g cvs
# passwd username
Client configuration
Finally user can connect to this CVS server using following syntax:
$ export CVSROOT=:pserver:vivek@192.168.1.100:/home/cvs
$ cvs loginWhere,

  • vivek - username
  • 192.168.1.100 - CVS server IP

See also:

Featured Articles:

Share this with other sys admins!
Facebook it - Tweet it - Print it -

{ 8 comments… read them below or add one }

1 balaji May 9, 2008

thank you

Reply

2 Mitko August 25, 2008

very helpful, thanks!

Reply

3 surendra kumar November 13, 2008

some of the points you are missing vivak
you didnt specified how to create repository,initilazing the cvs repository and import already existing projects
any way nice artical

Reply

4 Ghulam Mohmad November 27, 2008

I am sory to ask again the same thing as i had asked for the CVS client installation on Linux i have already CVS server installed on one linux machine now i want to install CVS client on another linux machine please furnish a step by step guideline to acheive this.

Waiting for reply.
Regards,
Ghulam Mohmad

Reply

5 Dev February 20, 2009

hey thanx for this document!!!!
i have configured cvs successfully…. and its running on port 2401 by default..
when i tried to connect ….ex.
cvs -d :pserver:username@server_name:/usr/local/cvsroot login
i got
:unrecognized auth response from host usage: options …..

please help me !!!!!
any idea why this happens ?
username is system account has rights to access cvs repository …

Reply

6 Vijay Thakur March 13, 2009

Yes a very helpful steps to configure to CVS in linux. But now i want to configure my other linux machine as a CVS client. For that what will be the steps and where can be the software obtained.

Reply

7 Shanker. April 10, 2009

cvs login: authorization failed: server 172.16.3.29 rejected access to /home/cvsrep for user cvs

Plz resolve the Issue

Reply

8 Binu Jayaraj December 4, 2009

Article was of great help. Thank you very much for sharing it. I would like to point out that, I couldn’t connect using pserver as the connection type instead I could manage connecting to server using extssh.

Reply

Leave a Comment

You can use these HTML tags and attributes for your code and commands: <strong> <em> <ol> <li> <u> <ul> <blockquote> <pre> <a href="" title="">
What is 10 + 6 ?
Please leave these two fields as-is:
Solve the simple math so we know that you are a human and not a bot.



Previous post:

Next post: