What are the minimum system requirements to run CVSNT?

Note: On PCs a Pentium III or higher processor is requried. (AMD K6 is not supported). If you require support for older processors then you may download the CVSNT Server source code and compile it with an alternative processor preference.

Where to send the Bug Reports for CVS Suite users?

Under the heading "Where to send the Bug Report" is the CVS Suite support e-mail address.

I have an urgent problem!

CVS Suite support (CVS Basic Support) does not provide solutions in a specified time period and therefore is probably unsuitable for an urgent problem.

Once an order is received for CVSNT Professional Support we can usually have urgent production problems resolved in a matter of hours (or at most a couple of days).

Our pre-sales support staff are software engineers and will be able to give you a solid understanding of how we will be able to solve your problem. In addition they can also alert our support engineers in advance about your problem so that the correct resources can be deployed to resolve the issue as soon as the order is received.

What Information should I provide with a bug report?

• Your customer name and/or order id
• Results of running cvsdiag on the server and also on the client.
• CVSNT server version number (eg: CVSNT 2.5.02.2048)
• Name and version of cvs client (eg: Eclispe 3.1)
• Name and version of Server operating system (eg: Windows XP Pro SP2, or Red Hat Linux ES v4)
• Name and version of Client operating system (eg: Windows NT 4 SP6, or Solaris 9)
• The CVSROOT used by client (eg: :pserver:host:/cvsrepo)
• Screenshot or exact wording of error message
• Your e-mail address

• Affected files (eg: the RCS file from the repository)
• Debug trace of CVSNT command which causes problem: Cvs –ttt or if the problem is with the lock server: cvslock -test
• If you are using the :ext: protocol, the extnt.ini from the CVSNT Installation Directory on the Windows client
• Dump of the client environment variables. On Windows type set > mh.log and send the file mh.log

Can I search for questions other people have asked and the answers they got?

Is there a list of current outstanding bugs?

Note: Many bugs are fixed in the commercial release of CVS Suite or testing releases of CVSNT Community Edition long before they are released as a stable installer for free. If any problem is costing you time or money then you should purchase CVS Suite which will ensure you have the latest features, patches and the best support.

Where can I download stable releases of CVSNT?

The download page for stable releases of the free CVSNT is: http://march-hare.com/cvspro.

At the far right of the page is a "download box", choose the download you want, choose an export server and accept the license terms by pressing the button.

Where can I download testing and unstable versions of CVSNT?

Support for these versions is only available from the open source CVSNT newsgroup and mailing list.

Is CVSNT available for VMS / OpenVMS ?

Is there free support?

The majority of problems with CVSNT can be solved by upgrading to CVS Suite 2009 and following the included documentation. For support or help with CVSNT 2.8.01 and CVS Suite 2009 please contact the CVS Suite Pre Sales Support team via sales@march-hare.com. Trials of CVS Suite 2009 can be downloaded from:
http://march-hare.com/cvspro/

These were the last published guidelines about submitting a question to the Community mailing list:

• READ THE MANUAL. If you are looking at how to set up "locking", "access control", "permissions", "only user XYZ should be able to create/import" etc. etc. then this is the place to go looking, in particular the chacl, lsacl, setting permissions and config sections.
• Search this FAQ for an explanation
• Search for an answer using the mailing list archive at http://www.cvsnt.org/pipermail/cvsnt/. The easiest way is with Google Site Search. If someone asked the same question in the last 10 days or maybe even the last 30 days it is unlikely anyone will answer your question again.
• Search for an answer in the trouble ticket database at http://customer.march-hare.com/webtools/bugzilla/tt.htm. If your question is a "known issue" or "bug" then asking about it will not help get it fixed any quicker. The trouble ticket database may include instructions for a workaround.
• Be polite. Messages may be deleted if they are suitably impolite, and will certainly be ignored. If you have been impolite in the past any future messages may also be ignored or deleted.
• Do not use the word urgent. If your problem must be resolved in a fixed time period you should employ an experienced CVS implementor or use March Hare Software Professional Support. It is impolite to use the word "urgent" to people who are assisting you on a voluntary basis and the penalty for this is described in the above bullet point.
• Do not use a disclaimer, or if you do be aware of the following restrictions and advice.
• Make yourself aware of the CVSNT.ORG terms and conditions for posting to a public mailing list here: http://www.cvsnt.org/wiki/disclaimer .
• Use a subject on the e-mail that accurately describes the problem, these are not suitable:
  • Problem
  • Bug in CVSNT
  • Help
  These are suitable:
  • Problem logging in using Eclipse client and :extssh:
  • Why does CVSNT make files read-only on checkout?
  • PDF Document attached to Help first time users
• Provide a step by step sequence of how to reproduce the problem
• Include the name and version of cvs client (eg: Eclispe 3.1)
• Include the name and version of cvs server (eg: CVSNT 2.5.01.1976)
• Include the name and version of Server operating system (eg: Windows XP SP2, or Red Hat Linux ES v4)
• Include the name and version of Client operating system (eg: Windows NT 4 SP6, Windows XP Pro SP2, or Solaris 9)
• Include the CVSROOT used by client (eg: :pserver:host:/cvsrepo)
• Ensure that you quote the exact wording of error messages (do not attach a bitmap image of the screen showing the message - it will be rejected from the mailing list)
• Quote excerpts from affected files (eg: the RCS file, CVSROOT directory from the repository) - do not attach the files since the mailing list will reject them.
• Run cvsdiag on the server and also on the client and review the results. You may post excerpts in your message body, but do not attach the results because the mailing list will reject them.
• Quote relevant segments of a debug trace of CVSNT command which causes problem: Cvs –ttt or if the problem is with the lock server cvslock -test - do not attach traces to your mailing list posts since the mailing list will reject them.
• If you are using the :ext: protocol, include the extnt.ini from the CVSNT Installation Directory on the Windows client in the body of your email.
• Quote relevant portions of a dump of the client environment variables. On Windows type set > mh.log and review the file mh.log - do not include this entire file in your message since the mailing list will reject it.
• If it is an authentication or native file permissions issue - enable operating system auditing and post the resulting messages.

If you have anti-virus software installed on the server and/or the client ensure they are disabled during your tests. Scanning of Workspaces and the Repository or TEMP directories is a frequent cause of errors.

Do not ask questions about storing sandboxes or repositories on network shares. This is not supported for free. Contact March Hare Software regarding Professional Support options that may be available for you if you require this functionality.

To contact the newsgroup you can subscribe here: http://www.cvsnt.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/cvsnt or if you have a news browser installed you can click here: news://news.cvsnt.org/support.cvsnt. If you are sending attachments please cc support@march-hare.com

CVSNT exists because people like you did not simply ask questions, but contributed as well. Consider contributing documentation, testing, patches or by purchasing the CVS Suite.

Noone answered my question on the newsgroup !

If you followed the posting guidelines and you did not receive any answers then these are the top explanations:

• The version you are using is old, and the problem is not relavent to anyone reading it. If you posted a question about CVSNT 2.0.6, CVSNT 1.11, or CVSNT 2.0.58d then this applies to you.
• The problem is fundamental and you should read the online manual or buy CVS Suite which includes a clear step by step administration and user guide (eBook).
• You have not waited long enough
• No one wants to answer your question.

To guarentee an answer purchase CVS Suite or CVS Professional Support.

Why are there advertising messages in the commit messages (and how to remove them)

There is a discreet advertising message added to every commit from a windows CVSNT client or on a windows CVSNT Server to encourage more users to invest in supporting the CVSNT development effort (either by joining the newsgroup, contributing code/tests, or by contributing to the cost of paying development staff). Our goal is to add two additional full-time programmers and we believe we can achieve this if at least 1% of those that download CVSNT purchase at least 1 license of CVS Suite.

• The advertising messages can be removed from the commit log history using the admin command
• You can prevent the client putting the advertising in the message by using cvs commit -M "message" as described in Bug 5397.
• You can prevent the server putting the advertising in the commit message by setting HKLM/Software/cvsnt/PServer, "HaveBoughtSuite"="yes" as described in bug 5398.

The editions of the CVSNT software purchased from our web site (CVS Suite etc) do NOT include the advertising.

If you purchase CVS Suite from our web site and upgrade your client and server then previous advertising messages stored in the repository will be hidden from the output of cvs log etc, Existing commits with the advertising are not automatically altered by the purchased CVS Suite software only hidden so that it can no longer be seen.

It has already been drawn to our attention that some companies may want purchase a single license to assist the project but not license ALL their users, however our store does not currently offer such a product but may be updated to include this in the future.

All customers who purchase CVS Suite 2008 also receive access to a build of CVSNT 2.5.04 that hides previous advertising messages and does not create new ones.

The CVS Suite software currently for sale from the web site includes many features not present in CVSNT and so is licensed per person (ie: if you have 20 people accessing the server you should purchase 20 copies of CVS Suite).

CVS Suite also includes many bug fixes, a complete list of the 380+ changes between CVS Suite 2.5.03 and CVS Suite 2008 is available here.

Reports of malware or a virus in CVSNT

The heuristics problem is typically resolved within a few days of it being reported. Other popular anti-virus products (for example, McAfee VirusScan and Norton AntiVirus) do not exhibit this behavior and may be used to confirm that the product you have downloaded is free of viruses.

You can compare the results from different anti-virus products by uploading a file here:
http://www.virustotal.com/

NOTE¹: March Hare Software do not have any affiliation with virustotal.com

NOTE²: The signed downloads of CVSNT, EVS, CVS Suite and CM Suite that March Hare Software provide from march-hare.com do not include malware or viruses.

I have set up an ACL but non authorised users can still check out files

The cvsnt command chacl is used to create an access control list (ACL). It is documented in the manual here.

An access control list is defined on a directory and branch (or trunk) to restrict read, write, create, tag and control by users or groups. The access modes are documented in the manual here.

Users and groups are synonymous - you can either specify permissions for individuals or groups. The user and group names used will depend on the authentication mechanism being used. Most CVSNT users authenticate against an Active Directory (windows) in which case the user and group names are the same as your windows login.

You can also use the lsacl or rlsacl commands to list the current permissions.

Owners (creators) automatically have administrative rights on any object they create.

The ACL system has two basic modes of operation:

• Allow all access by default
• Deny all access by default

CVSNT access control (and all other access control systems) are designed to work primarily on directories. Do not store a file in a "public" directory and try and use ACLs to completely hide it from all non-authorised users, store it in a separate (or a sub) directory and set the access control on that directory.

How do I upgrade from older versions of CVS or CVSNT?

The latest stable version of CVSNT Server and command line client is available at http://march-hare.com/cvspro/.

How to enable server side and client side debug logging

Versions and Operating System

If you are generating debug logs for March Hare Software support you also need to ensure that you send information about your environment such as the version of the server and the client and what operating systems are being used.

Enabling Server Side Tracing

For security purposes tracing of what is occuring on the server is disabled by default. Enabling Server Side Tracing using the Advanced tab in the “CVS for NT” Control Panel (Windows) or the /etc/cvsnt/PServer file AllowTrace=1 (Unix) will allow the server to be traced. Enabling tracing does not create any log files.

Debug Logging by Creating a Client and Server Trace from the Client

Any command that is ran on the client can create a debug log. This is the most common and generally the most useful type of logging. Use the -ttt switch with any CVSNT client command, for example:
cvs -ttt add fred.txt 2> addlog.err > addlog.log
cvs -ttt commit -m "commit this file" fred.txt 2> addlog.err > addlog.log

The log will appear on stderr.

Creating a Server Side Trace (Windows)

You can enable additional server side debug logging by setting the following registry variable to the name of a file to accept the log:
HLKM\Software\CVS\PServer\ServerTraceFile

The file and path must be writable by the CVS Suite Server.

Creating a Server Side Trace (Unix)

You can enable additional server side debug logging by setting the following variable in the /etc/cvsnt/PServer configuration file to the name of a file to accept the log:
ServerTraceFile=log20050622.log

The file and path must be writable by the CVS Suite Server.

Creating a Server Side Communications Log (Unix)

If the $CVS_SERVER_LOG variable is set in the servers environment to a name of a file that can be written then everything sent to the server is logged into $CVS_SERVER_LOG.in and everything sent from the server is logged into $CVS_SERVER_LOG.out.

Creating a Communications Trace Log (Windows or Unix Client)

If the $CVS_CLIENT_LOG variable is set in the client environment to a name of a file that can be written then everything received by the client is logged into $CVS_CLIENT_LOG.in and everything sent from the client is logged into $CVS_CLIENT_LOG.out.
Eg: set CVS_CLIENT_LOG=log20050622

What priority do March Hare apply to support requests.

The severity levels are:

• Repository corruption
• Server Security
• Workspace corruption
• Server crash (core dump)
• Client crash (core dump)
• General Faults / Installation
• CVSNT client compatibility
• Non CVSNT client compatibility
• Enhancements
• Platform support

Can I move my version history from Visual SourceSafe, PVCS, ClearCase or Perforce to CVSNT?

Visual Source Safe, PVCS, ClearCase and Perforce are each excellent version control solutions each with many features, and each with unique features.

CVSNT is not an emulator designed to replace any of them. However these tools solve problems generally defined by the phrases version control and configuration management, and those are the same problems that CVSNT is designed to solve. Therefore in some situations it may be possible to switch one for the other and have very little impact on your business.

Can I integrate CVSNT with some other software

March Hare Software can assist you in integrating your application with CVSNT by:

• Access to the CVSNT Development Manager, Product Manager and other technical staff
• Code samples of how to implement integration
• Features to make integrating easier
• Write the integration on your behalf

If your project is open source licensed (GPL or similar) then your best approach is to send a request for development assistance to the open source CVSNT newsgroup. To contact the newsgroup you can subscribe here or if you have a news browser installed you can click here.

If your project is commercially licensed or you wish for March Hare Software to provide some assistance then you will need to have a Professional Support contract. The correct level contract will depend on the amount of assistance you require, contact a sales representative for more information.

Can I create multiple synchronised repositories with CVSNT

March Hare Software have our own repository hosted in UK, Australia and the USA. A sales consultant will be able to assist you further.

Are the commercial releases of CVS Suite the same as the free CVSNT?

The changes in the community editions of CVSNT are driven by the requirements of the open source developers, whereas the changes in the CVS Suite are driven by our customers. Features only available in CVS Suite include:

• CVS Suite High Performance Server Service
• Bugzilla, Mantis and Atlassian Jira Integration
• Multi-Site unison synchronisation
• Visual Studio Integration (SCCI)
• CVS Suite Studio - Graphical CVS Client
• Release Manager
• Install Guide / eBook
• Using CVS Suite with Eclipse guide
• Using CVS Suite with SQL Navigator and Oracle Guide

Generally this CVSNT Community Edition supports newer versions of Open Source Linux libraries and has cutting edge experimental features, and the CVS Suite works with and is tested with Commercial Linux, Windows and Unix distributions and is more stable and has features commercial software developers require.

Between CVSNT 2.0.51 and CVSNT 2.5.02 we did try and keep the two releases very similar - however from CVSNT 2.5.03 it became clear that the community of open source developers wanted to use much newer technologies (like libxml2 versus expat) than most commercial operating systems supported.

The source code for all versions of CVSNT are available from the CVSNT repository, and all builds are available at some time from the open source web site. However the open source CVSNT web site only keeps one build of CVSNT available at any time. Open source developers can "checkout" any version from the repository and build it at any time.

March Hare Software provide five levels of commercial support, and all levels have access to the latest software at the time of purchase.

Silver, Gold and Platinum Annual Software Maintenance and Support customers have access to the entire history of stable and patched releases of CVS Suite.

CVS Suite (no Annual Software Maintenance and Support) customers have access to the latest stable and patched versions at the time of purchase.

All Annual Software Maintenance and Support customers receive patched versions of CVSNT as frequently as every fortnight (but not usually so - since there are many fortnights with no bugs reported).

All CVS Suite customers also receive some plugins and client applications which are not licensed under the GPL and are not available for free. The source code for these is not available in the CVSNT repository.

Conversely not all versions of CVSNT are made available to professional and basic support customers. Releases of CVSNT made to customers undergo additional quality assurance and release procedures.

The following data was generated using David A. Wheelers SLOCCount:

• TOTAL SUITE CODE: 794,361 lines
• DIRECTLY FROM CVSNT PROJECT: 443,003 (56%) lines
• AVAILABLE IN SUITE ONLY (NON-GPL): 35,324 (4%) lines

Low Performance CVSNT versus High Performance CVS Suite

The commercial implementation is faster but also uses a manager process that is not open source. This provides:

• reduced lag on client performance while servers start
• allows the server processes to share information to improve performance

It is not possible to use CVSNT 2.8 Server without the manager process.

How much of the code is Free/Open Source

Therefore to help them we make a deliberate decision to keep a small but extremely useful part of the code non-open source.

We have NOT removed any features or documentation from the Community edition of CVSNT, but included in the CVS Suite these additional components:

• CVS Suite High Performance Server Service
• Bugzilla, Mantis and Atlassian Jira Integration
• Multi-Site unison synchronisation
• Visual Studio Integration (SCCI)
• CVS Suite Studio - Graphical CVS Client
• Release Manager
• Install Guide / eBook
• Using CVS Suite with Eclipse guide
• Using CVS Suite with SQL Navigator and Oracle Guide

NOTE: The majority of code in the CVSNT Project is Copyright March Hare Software Ltd, with some code Copyright March Hare Software Ltd and Tony Hoyle.

The following data was generated using David A. Wheelers SLOCCount and CVS Suite 2009:

• TOTAL SUITE CODE: 794,361 lines
• CVSNT PROJECT: 443,003 (56%) lines
• AVAILABLE IN SUITE ONLY (NON-GPL): 35,324 (4%) lines

CVSNT ONLY

• ansic: 224603 (55.09%)
• cpp: 123608 (30.32%)
• sh: 48791 (11.97%)
• asm: 3495 (0.86%)
• ada: 1681 (0.41%)
• perl: 1493 (0.37%)
• pascal: 1089 (0.27%)
• cs: 1008 (0.25%)
• python: 918 (0.23%)
• yacc: 805 (0.20%)
• sed: 181 (0.04%)
• lisp: 7 (0.00%)
• Total Physical Source Lines of Code (SLOC) = 407,679

cvsnt + winmerge + tortoisecvs + wincvs:

• cpp: 436878 (57.56%)
• ansic: 255095 (33.61%)
• sh: 50251 (6.62%)
• asm: 5570 (0.73%)
• perl: 2234 (0.29%)
• cs: 1887 (0.25%)
• ada: 1681 (0.22%)
• yacc: 1559 (0.21%)
• pascal: 1289 (0.17%)
• python: 962 (0.13%)
• php: 726 (0.10%)
• exp: 692 (0.09%)
• sed: 181 (0.02%)
• ruby: 25 (0.00%)
• lisp: 7 (0.00%)
• Total Physical Source Lines of Code (SLOC) = 759,037

COMMERCIAL SUITE CODE ONLY:

• cpp: 26524 (75.09%)
• sh: 8800 (24.91%)
• Total Physical Source Lines of Code (SLOC) = 35,324