[GLLUG] Re: CVS File Permissions

[Scott Henry Harrison]

Frank Louis Tuma writes:
> I'm new to setting up CVS (and Linux administration in general) and was 
> wondering what is the best way to set up file permissions.  
> 
> I'm currently running CVS 1.12.5 on Debian Testing/Unstable (Sarge).
> I've already created a repository in '/usr/local/cvsroot'.  
> 
> Right now I have a 'cvsuser' group that owns the '/user/local/cvsroot' 
> directory as well as all directories in 'cvsroot' except for 'CVSROOT' 
> which is owned by 'cvsadmin'.  
> 
> Directory Listings:
> -------------------------------------------
> nixx at purplehaze:/usr/local$ ls -al
> total 44
> .
> .
> .
> drwxrwsr-x    4 root     cvsuser      4096 Feb 12 15:49 cvsroot
> .
> .
> .  
> 
> nixx at purplehaze:/usr/local/cvsroot$ ls -al
> total 16
> drwxrwsr-x    4 root     cvsuser      4096 Feb 12 15:49 .
> drwxrwsr-x   11 root     staff        4096 Feb  9 12:20 ..
> drwxrwsr-x    3 root     cvsadmin     4096 Feb 12 15:54 CVSROOT
> drwxrwsr-x    4 nixx     cvsuser      4096 Feb 12 16:16 deadly
> -------------------------------------------  
> 
> What I'm trying to do is set up the CVSROOT (where are the config files 
> are stored) to only be accessible by 'cvsadmin'(s) while the rest of the 
> directories accessible by everyone who is a 'cvsuser'. I get an error when 
> trying to checkout files from 'deadly' -- it can't update the 'history' 
> file in 'CVSROOT'. Could someone please shed some light on the situation?  
> 
> Thanks.
> /:Frank 

For CVSROOT, I vaguely recall that the "history" file
and lock files need to be writeable by users.  You can
alter the LockDir option inside CVSROOT/config so
that lock files are created elsewhere on the server.
Might want to do something like
chgrp cvsuser CVSROOT/history; chmod g+rwx,g+s CVSROOT/history 

On a tangent here, rather than CVS, I would highly recommend subversion
(subversion.tigris.org) as a more powerful, elegant,
and easier-to-administrate tool for managing a software repository. 

Regards,
Scott