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RE: Running CVS as Non-Root User


From: Bulgrien, Kevin
Subject: RE: Running CVS as Non-Root User
Date: Mon, 24 Jan 2011 12:52:35 -0600

> Right...I was more thinking of starting it in a root-oriented
> way, not necessarily running it as root.  By that I mean that
> I've not found any way for me as a non-root user to actually
> run a CVS server without some kind of root intervention to
> update the inetd/xinetd config. I was hoping that I could at
> least test with something like 'cvs -d' to daemonize it, but
> I haven't found any way to do that at this point.
>
> Hey...in looking around a bit, it appears that you don't
> actually have to set up a cvs "server" if you use SSH.  Is
> that correct?

Yes.

> Looks like SSH is the preferred way to go.  Just have to
> figure out how that will work for those of us developing on windows.

The MinGW MSYS environment + MSYS DTK on Windows provides a cvs client
and ssh support and many GNU tools without the overhead of installing
something like Cygwin (and it is much, much lighter in terms of disk
usage).  It is used extensively in my work environment.  If you do not
mind running an older MSYS setup, there is actually an installer-based
setup that is very easy to get set up.  I'm not talking about MinGW,
but rather the MinGW Minimal SYStem (MSYS).  The nice thing about the
installer is that it allows everyone to be set up the same way.  It
avoids the complication of having server functions (it is a client
environment only).

When we tried to use cygwin years and years ago, besides some of the
cygwin oddities and general hugeness, you never really had any
assurance that everyone was working in the same environment, so when
something went wrong it was hard to figure out.  And then, you also
had to deal with mirroring the cygwin installer stuff because of
restrictions on accessing outside software sources in a tightly
controlled IT environment...  It was relatively easy to get the
installer approved, where getting open access to a huge OSS
mirror of stuff including server functionality was a can of
worms begging not to be opened.

This is a shell environment and not some GUI...  and it might not
be compatible with someone expecting a "windows-like" environment.
For a command-line guy, though, the environment is amazing and its
not that hard to make scripts that can run both in Windows and from
a *nix shell.  For example, I have scripts that can auto-switch
between use of say, msxsl.exe and *nix XSLT processors without the
user ever knowing or caring which OS the script is running under.

Example MSYS setup.  Now bear in mind that since this installer was
build in '04, the cvs client is a bit old.  If that's a problem, it
is possible to update stuff by simply unpacking tarballs over the
installation.  Don't know if I should include the details right off,
but what they hay, why not.   Here's what we do:

HOWTO install the MinGW MSYS base environment

Download and execute the MSYS-1.0.11-2004.04.30-1.exe Windows installer

Setup - Do you wish to continue
  Yes
Welcome to the "Minimal SYStem" Setup Wizard
  Next >
License Agreement
  Yes
Information
  Next >
Select Destination Directory
  C:\msys\1.0
  Next >
Select Components
  Installation for i386 based CPUs
  Next >
Select Start Menu Folder
  MinGW
  Next >
Ready to Install
  Install
Installing
  ...
  Do you wish to continue with the post install? [yn ]
    y
    <Return>
  Do you have MinGW installed? [yn ]
    n
    <Return>
  Press ENTER to continue
    <Return>
  Press ENTER to continue
    <Return>
  Press any key to continue . . .
    <Return>
Setup has finished installing "Minimal SYStem" on your computer
  Welcome to MSYS
    Uncheck
  README
    Uncheck
Finish

HOWTO install the MinGW MSYS Developers Tool Kit

NOTE: Always install MSYS before the DTK.

Download and execute the msysDTK-1.0.1.exe Windows installer

Setup - Do you wish to continue
  Yes
Welcome to the "MSYS Developer Tool Kit" Setup Wizard
  Next >
License Agreement
  Yes
Select Destination Directory
  C:\msys\1.0
  Next >
Select Components
  Installation for i386 based CPUs
  Next >
Ready to Install
  Install
Installing
  ...
Information
  Next >
Setup has finished installing MSYS Developer Tool Kit on your computer.
  Finish

At this point you have a fully functional cvs and ssh client, along with
a nice bash scripting environment.  We do a little more environment
tweaking for our own purposes, but, aside from creating a tmp directory
in your user folder and setting up a .profile that does things like:

  export CVS_RSH="ssh"
  export EDITOR="/usr/bin/vim"

the other tweaking we do doesn't really affect use as a cvs client.  The
tmp directory is critical to the cvs client.

---
Kevin R. Bulgrien
Design and Development Engineer

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