Re: [savannah-help-public] I can't reach the gnu.org web repository (Ruben, please read)

[Bob Proulx]

Richard Stallman wrote:
> Ruben, could this bug have been introduced by the upgrade in Trisquel?
> This may be the first time I have accessed the repo since then.
> The setup of my checkout has not changed; if nothing has
> changed on Savannah, that suggests the problem is in cvs.

CVS on Savannah did migrate recently from vcs0 to a new VM host vcs1.
Every effort was attempted to make the migration transparent and
seemless but sometimes gremlins do get into things.

Although the name did not change (cvs.savannah.gnu.org) the IP address
did change.  This is the new address for IPv4 and IPv6.

  $ host cvs.savannah.gnu.org
  cvs.savannah.gnu.org has address 209.51.188.81
  cvs.savannah.gnu.org has IPv6 address 2001:470:142::81

My first suspicion is that there is a stale IP address that is still
pointing to the old vcs0 system which does not have.  Could the
address be verified to be the above on your system?

The above is the "important stuff".  Below this is additional
background information which I will comment upon since I am here.

> When I do  cvs up  on my checkout of  gnu.org/philosophy  it gives
> 
> Cannot access /web/www/CVSROOT
> No such file or directory
> 
> CVS/Root in that directory says
> :ext:address@hidden:/web/www
> which is unchanged from 2012.
> CVS/Repository says
> www/philosophy  

All of the above looks okay to me.  I can also make a good cvs
checkout of the entire www directory myself.  I did that just now as a
test and all worked okay.  The command I used was:

  cvs -d :ext:address@hidden:/web/www co www/philosophy

Note that I am "rwp" not "rms" in the above but otherwise should be
the same.  The above worked okay for me just a few minutes ago.

> I had an environment variable
> 
> export CVSROOT=address@hidden:/cvsroot/emacs
> 
> but getting rid of that did not change anything.

I do not think the CVSROOT variable should be needed.  I know that
CVSROOT has been a traditional variable documented for working with
CVS but I recommend against setting it.  I think it is better to give
that information in the -d option when the local sandbox is created
and it is stored in the CVS/Root therefore not needed at any time
after the initial creation.

> I also had
> 
> export CVS_RSH=~/bin/ssh-for-cvs
> 
> but getting rid of that did not change anything.

I do not know what ~/bin/ssh-for-cvs is on your system and therefore
cannot comment at all about it as such.

But cvs being from the days of "rsh" cvs calls "rsh" and these days we
expect "rsh" to be a symlink resolving to "ssh".  (Through the
"alternatives" package management infrastructure typically.)  Then the
insecure rsh of old is avoided by default for all applications without
needing the application to be specifically reconfigured.  That's the
way it typically works for such a long lived program as cvs which has
been around forever.

If the symlink from rsh to ssh exists then CVS_RSH is not needed.
However if a system does have an actual non-ssh "rsh" command
installed then CVS_RSH is needed as an override to select ssh.

Also if specific VPN or specific routing for ssh is needed then
CVS_RSH can be used to create a custom command that uses a specific
connection path.  Most of us do not need this and use the ssh that is
installed as the default with the default system routing and do not
need to set CVS_RSH at all these days.  However special situations do
occur.

Bob