Before we begin, I strongly recommend you read the CVS manual that was installed with the rest of CVS. If the stand-alone info browser or the texinfo package is installed on your system, you can see this manual by typing the command info cvs at your shell.

First, plan out where you want your repository. Debian defaults to /var/lib/cvs. My repository is under the directory /cvs/root, and is on its own small partition. What you do depends on your needs and can vary widely.

After you have planned where you want to put your repository, made the necessary partitions, if desired, and run the following command (we assume that it will be at /cvs/root):

$ cvs -d /cvs/root init
  

That will initialize your repository and set up the necessary CVSROOT files.

Now that we have the CVSROOT set up, we need to copy the appropriate libraries and files for cvsd, which runs the Pserver in the chroot jail.

$ cvsd-buildroot /cvs
$ mkdir -p var/lock
$ adduser cvsd
$ addgroup cvsd
   

Uid cvsd
Gid cvsd
PidFile /var/run/cvsd.pid
RootJail /cvs
MaxConnections 10
Nice 1
Listen * 2401
Repos /root
Limit coredumpsize 0
    

It's back to configuring CVS, but don't worry, we are almost there! We have to edit a couple of necessary files to allow for anonymous access. First, making sure you aren't in the CVS directory, check out the CVSROOT module:

# cvs -d /cvs/root checkout CVSROOT
# cd CVSROOT
  

Now edit the file READERS. Create it if it isn't there, and add a line that reads “anonymous”.

The file READERS is a list of users who have read-only access to the CVS repository. People with write access are listed in the file WRITERS. Read the cvs manual ^[1] for more information on these files.

Now commit the repository with the command below. We assume that your current working directory is CVSROOT. If it isn't, forget the cd step.

# cd ../
# cvs -d /cvs/root commit
  

You should now get a message that says something like Re-building administrative files, which means that it was successful.

One last step and we're all done! Run the following command, and when prompted for a password, just press ENTER:

# cvsd-passwd /cvs/root anonymous
  

Congratulations! You now have secure, anonymous CVS Pserver access to the repository!

There is one small feature here that is really beyond the scope of this Mini-HOWTO but is worth noting nonetheless. It is the ability to change the directory where the Pserver will place lock files.

Normally the Pserver will place lock files in the same directory as the files that you are trying to check out, but this can cause permissions mayhem. Step back to when we built the chroot jail for cvsd; we also created the directory var/lock. This is where we will place the lockfiles instead.

So use the following example, replacing /cvs with wherever your chroot environment is, and var with wherever the locks are going to be placed. Mine are placed in var/lock, and there is nothing else under var, so a chown -R is safe. Also, replace the cvsd user and group ids with the user and group ids that cvsd runs as.

# cd /cvs
# chown -R cvsd:cvsd var
# chmod -R 775 var
# cd
# cvs -d /cvs/root checkout CVSROOT
# cd CVSROOT
  

Now we want to edit the file config. Change lock dir to the directory you want the locks to be placed, in our case /var/lock.

Now commit the changes:

# cd ../
# cvs -d /cvs/root commit
  

And that's it!