Essential CVS

Repository Access Methods

CVS provides a variety of ways to access the repository. These methods are briefly described in the following sections, and Chapter 8 explains them in more detail.

Client Side

On the client side, you specify the access method as part of the repository path. If you don’t declare one of the following methods, CVS assumes either the local or ext method:

local

Connect to a repository on the same computer as the sandbox, but do not use client/server mode.

ext

Connect with an externally defined rsh or rsh-like connection method (such as ssh). If you use anything other than rsh, the CVS_RSH environment variable must be set on the client computer.

fork

Connect to a repository on the same computer as the sandbox as if it were a remote machine. This method is useful if you are trying to diagnose problems with client/server mode.

gserver

Connect to the repository using the GSS-API and Kerberos 5.

kserver

Connect to the repository using Kerberos 4.

pserver

Connect to the repository using CVS’s internal password server.

server

Connect to the repository using CVS’s internal rsh server (not always available).

Server Side

The kserver, gserver, and pserver access modes require a server to run on the repository computer. For these modes, the server is started with inetd or xinetd. The inetd configuration must be on one line and should call CVS with the --allow-root and -f options and the pserver or kserver command.

The parameter to the --allow-root option is the path ...