2.6. CVS Authentication

2.6.1. Background

Authentication is done in CVS through the $CVSROOT/CVSROOT/passwd file. It can be easily manipulated through some of the CVS administration tools that are available. An alternate authentication method is ssh, which requires no extra setup on the server side.

2.6.2. CVS administration tools

I recommend cvsadmin, but there are also a variety of manual methods that can be used in the absence of such tools, one of which involves copying the system shadow file and modifying it for use by CVS. For more information on this manual method, see the Red Hat CVS pserver setup guide by Michael Amorose (http://www.michael-amorose.com/cvs/).

2.6.3. Setup authentication using the cvsadmin tool

You can find a tarball to install on your system using the above address, but here is the address of a recent RPM package of the version. This package is intended for Mandrake systems, but is compatible with Red Hat Linux 7.1:

After installing, create a password file (touch $CVSROOT/CVSROOT/passwd, touch $CVSROOT/CVSROOT/users), and execute cvsadmin add <usernames>.