LinuxQuestions.org - cvs checkout on slackware 8.1

i'm new to the linux world...i had a friend setup cvs for me on my old netbsd box and i'm tryin to get it working in slackware because you can't go wrong when it downloads and compiles dependencies for you :p i am somewhat confused tho, i've read through the man pages and i can't figure how to fix this:
cvs checkout: No CVSROOT specified! Please use the `-d' option
cvs [checkout aborted]: or set the CVSROOT environment variable.

basiclly what i want to do is checkout all of the packages for slackware to /usr/pkgsrc. if someone could kind of walk me through this or help in anyway i'd be very thankful.