CVS Login: Authorization Failed
 

Hi

I'm trying to set up my CVS Repository on a Red Hat ES 4 with rpm cvs-1.11.17-9.RHEL4. I configured the /etc/xinetd.d/cvspserver file:

service cvspserver
{
port = 2401
socket_type = stream
protocol = tcp
wait = no
user = cvs
passenv = PATH
server = /usr/bin/cvs
server_args = -f --allow-root=/desarrollo/cvs pserver
disable = no
}

I checked that the CVSROOT is correct. When I log with a standard operating system user and password I get:

cvs login: authorization failed: server localhost rejected access to /desarrollo
/cvs for user nboscan

I tried with an old repository, with a new repository, I tried to using a passwd file and none of this works.

The server is up because I can do a telnet localhost 2401 and it works.

Any ideas?

cvs server is using its own passwd file, which is located under CVSROOT. If you want to add users to the server you must read this to see how to create users and using a perl script to give them a password.

Hi bathory

Thanks for the answer but on my first tests the passwd was not created and not on the CVSROOT directory. In my second test I created one checked out the CVSROOT module and saved it and it is not authenticating using the passwd user and password.

I created a passwd using checkout, update, commit. Checked that the file was created in the CVSROOT folder. Tried to login:

cvs login: authorization failed: server odin rejected access to /desarrollo/cvs
for user nboscan

It's really getting frustrating, it should have something to do with the configuration because with or without passwd file I can't login

I checked login as cvs and root and it works. But is not working for the rest of the users. The rest of the users has read and write access to the CVS Repository.

Your cvs passwd file must look like this:
The <random chars> is the password created by the perl script and the last option (cvs) is the user under which cvs pserver is running. Make sure that the whole repository is owned by that user.

Bathory thanks a lot

I figured out that there were 3 things wrong.

1.- In the /etc/xinetd.d/cvspserver the user has to be root
2.- The passwd file is required for pserver protocol. With CVSNT this was not a requirement.
3.- I was using htpasswd to generate the passwords and this didn't work. I used the perl script.

Now, managing the passwd file can be a real headache. If I use the sserver protocol I can authenticate using the operating system user/password?

I don't know how sserver works, but searching a little I found that:
With pserver you can use the system password file (/etc/passwd), but it's not recommended since it's a security risk. With the pserver passwd you use virtual users that are onle able to use the cvs and cannot login to your system to use others services.