Errors along the lines of "connection refused" typically indicate
that inetd isn't even listening for connections on port 2401
whereas errors like "connection reset by peer",
"received broken pipe signal", "recv() from server: EOF",
or "end of file from server"
typically indicate that inetd is listening for
connections but is unable to start CVS (this is frequently
caused by having an incorrect path in `inetd.conf'
or by firewall software rejecting the connection).
"unrecognized auth response" errors are caused by a bad command
line in `inetd.conf', typically an invalid option or forgetting
to put the `pserver' command at the end of the line.
Another less common problem is invisible control characters that
your editor "helpfully" added without you noticing.
One good debugging tool is to "telnet servername
2401". After connecting, send any text (for example
"foo" followed by return). If CVS is working
correctly, it will respond with
| | cvs [pserver aborted]: bad auth protocol start: foo
|
If instead you get:
| | Usage: cvs [cvs-options] command [command-options-and-arguments]
...
|
then you're missing the `pserver' command at the end of the
line in `inetd.conf'; check to make sure that the entire command
is on one line and that it's complete.
Likewise, if you get something like:
| | Unknown command: `pserved'
CVS commands are:
add Add a new file/directory to the repository
...
|
then you've misspelled `pserver' in some way. If it isn't
obvious, check for invisible control characters (particularly
carriage returns) in `inetd.conf'.
If it fails to work at all, then make sure inetd is working
right. Change the invocation in `inetd.conf' to run the
echo program instead of cvs. For example:
| | 2401 stream tcp nowait root /bin/echo echo hello
|
After making that change and instructing inetd to
re-read its configuration file, "telnet servername
2401" should show you the text hello and then the
server should close the connection. If this doesn't
work, you need to fix it before you can worry about
CVS problems.
On AIX systems, the system will often have its own
program trying to use port 2401. This is AIX's problem
in the sense that port 2401 is registered for use with
CVS. I hear that there is an AIX patch available
to address this problem.
Another good debugging tool is the `-d'
(debugging) option to inetd. Consult your system
documentation for more information.
If you seem to be connecting but get errors like:
| | cvs server: cannot open /root/.cvsignore: Permission denied
cvs [server aborted]: can't chdir(/root): Permission denied
|
then you probably haven't specified `-f' in `inetd.conf'.
(In releases prior to CVS 1.11.1, this problem can be caused by
your system setting the $HOME environment variable
for programs being run by inetd. In this case, you can either
have inetd run a shell script that unsets $HOME and then runs
CVS, or you can use env to run CVS with a pristine
environment.)
If you can connect successfully for a while but then can't,
you've probably hit inetd's rate limit.
(If inetd receives too many requests for the same service
in a short period of time, it assumes that something is wrong
and temporarily disables the service.)
Check your inetd documentation to find out how to adjust the
rate limit (some versions of inetd have a single rate limit,
others allow you to set the limit for each service separately.)
