cvs update fails, complains 'No CVSROOT specified' even when it is set

[Neeraj Mahajan]

Hi,

I am having this weird problem - when I issue cvs update it returns an error.
The following steps would give more details:

$ cd ~/dev
$ echo $CVSROOT
somecvsserver.com:/CVSROOT
$ cvs co someproj
$ cd someproj
$ ls
neerajprojects 
$ ls neerajprojects
CVS    cfg    project1
$ cvs -nf update neerajprojects/project1
cvs update: No CVSROOT specified!  Please use the `-d' option 
cvs [update aborted]: or set the CVSROOT environment variable.
$ cd neerajprojects
$ cvs -nf update project1
cvs update: Updating project1
... i.e. this succeeds


Any idea what the problem is?
One thing that I observed is that when using SmartCVS, it always executes the 
cvs commands from the base dir ~/dev/someproj/neerajprojects and not from 
~/dev/someproj.
>From SmartCVS Project Manager, the root path of the project is 
>~/dev/someproj/neerajprojects and not ~/dev/someproj. I am not sure how this 
>affects anything but thought this info might be helpful in resolving the issue.

Regards,
Neeraj