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If you are having trouble with CVS, this appendix
may help. If there is a particular error message which
you are seeing, then you can look up the message
alphabetically. If not, you can look through the
section on other problems to see if your problem is
mentioned there.
Here is a partial list of error messages that you may
see from CVS. It is not a complete list--CVS
is capable of printing many, many error messages, often
with parts of them supplied by the operating system,
but the intention is to list the common and/or
potentially confusing error messages.
The messages are alphabetical, but introductory text
such as `cvs update: ' is not considered in
ordering them.
In some cases the list includes messages printed by old
versions of CVS (partly because users may not be
sure which version of CVS they are using at any
particular moment).
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file:line: Assertion 'text' failed
The exact format of this message may vary depending on
your system. It indicates a bug in CVS, which can
be handled as described in Dealing with bugs in CVS or this manual.
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cvs command: authorization failed: server host rejected access
This is a generic response when trying to connect to a
pserver server which chooses not to provide a
specific reason for denying authorization. Check that
the username and password specified are correct and
that the CVSROOT specified is allowed by `--allow-root'
in `inetd.conf'. See Direct connection with password authentication.
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cvs command: conflict: removed file was modified by second party
This message indicates that you removed a file, and
someone else modified it. To resolve the conflict,
first run `cvs add file'. If desired, look
at the other party's modification to decide whether you
still want to remove it. If you don't want to remove
it, stop here. If you do want to remove it, proceed
with `cvs remove file' and commit your
removal.
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cannot change permissions on temporary directory
This message has been happening in a non-reproducible,
occasional way when we run the client/server testsuite,
both on Red Hat Linux 3.0.3 and 4.1. We haven't been
able to figure out what causes it, nor is it known
whether it is specific to Linux (or even to this
particular machine!). If the problem does occur on
other unices, `Operation not permitted' would be
likely to read `Not owner' or whatever the system
in question uses for the unix EPERM error. If
you have any information to add, please let us know as
described in Dealing with bugs in CVS or this manual. If you experience this error
while using CVS, retrying the operation which
produced it should work fine.
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cvs [server aborted]: Cannot check out files into the repository itself
The obvious cause for this message (especially for
non-client/server CVS) is that the CVS root
is, for example, `/usr/local/cvsroot' and you try
to check out files when you are in a subdirectory, such
as `/usr/local/cvsroot/test'. However, there is a
more subtle cause, which is that the temporary
directory on the server is set to a subdirectory of the
root (which is also not allowed). If this is the
problem, set the temporary directory to somewhere else,
for example `/var/tmp'; see TMPDIR in
All environment variables which affect CVS, for how to set the
temporary directory.
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cannot commit files as 'root'
See `'root' is not allowed to commit files'.
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cannot open CVS/Entries for reading: No such file or directory
This generally indicates a CVS internal error, and
can be handled as with other CVS bugs
(see section Dealing with bugs in CVS or this manual). Usually there is a workaround--the
exact nature of which would depend on the situation but
which hopefully could be figured out.
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cvs [init aborted]: cannot open CVS/Root: No such file or directory
This message is harmless. Provided it is not
accompanied by other errors, the operation has
completed successfully. This message should not occur
with current versions of CVS, but it is documented
here for the benefit of CVS 1.9 and older.
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cvs server: cannot open /root/.cvsignore: Permission denied
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cvs [server aborted]: can't chdir(/root): Permission denied
See Trouble making a connection to a CVS server.
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cvs [checkout aborted]: cannot rename file file to CVS/,,file: Invalid argument
This message has been reported as intermittently
happening with CVS 1.9 on Solaris 2.5. The cause is
unknown; if you know more about what causes it, let us
know as described in Dealing with bugs in CVS or this manual.
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cvs [command aborted]: cannot start server via rcmd
This, unfortunately, is a rather nonspecific error
message which CVS 1.9 will print if you are
running the CVS client and it is having trouble
connecting to the server. Current versions of CVS
should print a much more specific error message. If
you get this message when you didn't mean to run the
client at all, you probably forgot to specify
:local:, as described in The Repository.
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ci: file,v: bad diff output line: Binary files - and /tmp/T2a22651 differ
CVS 1.9 and older will print this message
when trying to check in a binary file if
RCS is not correctly installed. Re-read the
instructions that came with your RCS distribution
and the INSTALL file in the CVS
distribution. Alternately, upgrade to a current
version of CVS, which checks in files itself
rather than via RCS.
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cvs checkout: could not check out file
With CVS 1.9, this can mean that the co program
(part of RCS) returned a failure. It should be
preceded by another error message, however it has been
observed without another error message and the cause is
not well-understood. With the current version of CVS,
which does not run co, if this message occurs
without another error message, it is definitely a CVS
bug (see section Dealing with bugs in CVS or this manual).
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cvs [login aborted]: could not find out home directory
This means that you need to set the environment
variables that CVS uses to locate your home directory.
See the discussion of HOME, HOMEDRIVE, and HOMEPATH in
All environment variables which affect CVS.
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cvs update: could not merge revision rev of file: No such file or directory
CVS 1.9 and older will print this message if there was
a problem finding the rcsmerge program. Make
sure that it is in your PATH, or upgrade to a
current version of CVS, which does not require
an external rcsmerge program.
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cvs [update aborted]: could not patch file: No such file or directory
This means that there was a problem finding the
patch program. Make sure that it is in your
PATH. Note that despite appearances the message
is not referring to whether it can find file.
If both the client and the server are running a current
version of CVS, then there is no need for an
external patch program and you should not see this
message. But if either client or server is running
CVS 1.9, then you need patch.
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cvs update: could not patch file; will refetch
This means that for whatever reason the client was
unable to apply a patch that the server sent. The
message is nothing to be concerned about, because
inability to apply the patch only slows things down and
has no effect on what CVS does.
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dying gasps from server unexpected
There is a known bug in the server for CVS 1.9.18
and older which can cause this. For me, this was
reproducible if I used the `-t' global option. It
was fixed by Andy Piper's 14 Nov 1997 change to
src/filesubr.c, if anyone is curious.
If you see the message,
you probably can just retry the operation which failed,
or if you have discovered information concerning its
cause, please let us know as described in Dealing with bugs in CVS or this manual.
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end of file from server (consult above messages if any)
The most common cause for this message is if you are
using an external rsh program and it exited with
an error. In this case the rsh program should
have printed a message, which will appear before the
above message. For more information on setting up a
cvs client and server, see Remote repositories.
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cvs [update aborted]: EOF in key in RCS file file,v
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cvs [checkout aborted]: EOF while looking for end of string in RCS file file,v
This means that there is a syntax error in the given
RCS file. Note that this might be true even if RCS can
read the file OK; CVS does more error checking of
errors in the RCS file. That is why you may see this
message when upgrading from CVS 1.9 to CVS
1.10. The likely cause for the original corruption is
hardware, the operating system, or the like. Of
course, if you find a case in which CVS seems to
corrupting the file, by all means report it,
(see section Dealing with bugs in CVS or this manual).
There are quite a few variations of this error message,
depending on exactly where in the RCS file CVS
finds the syntax error.
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cvs commit: Executing 'mkmodules'
This means that your repository is set up for a version
of CVS prior to CVS 1.8. When using CVS
1.8 or later, the above message will be preceded by
| | cvs commit: Rebuilding administrative file database
|
If you see both messages, the database is being rebuilt
twice, which is unnecessary but harmless. If you wish
to avoid the duplication, and you have no versions of
CVS 1.7 or earlier in use, remove -i mkmodules
every place it appears in your modules
file. For more information on the modules file,
see The modules file.
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missing author
Typically this can happen if you created an RCS file
with your username set to empty. CVS will, bogusly,
create an illegal RCS file with no value for the author
field. The solution is to make sure your username is
set to a non-empty value and re-create the RCS file.
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cvs [checkout aborted]: no such tag tag
This message means that CVS isn't familiar with
the tag tag. Usually this means that you have
mistyped a tag name; however there are (relatively
obscure) cases in which CVS will require you to
try a few other CVS commands involving that tag,
before you find one which will cause CVS to update
the `val-tags' file; see discussion of val-tags in
File permissions. You only need to worry about
this once for a given tag; when a tag is listed in
`val-tags', it stays there. Note that using
`-f' to not require tag matches does not override
this check; see Common command options.
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*PANIC* administration files missing
This typically means that there is a directory named
CVS but it does not contain the administrative files
which CVS puts in a CVS directory. If the problem is
that you created a CVS directory via some mechanism
other than CVS, then the answer is simple, use a name
other than CVS. If not, it indicates a CVS bug
(see section Dealing with bugs in CVS or this manual).
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rcs error: Unknown option: -x,v/
This message will be followed by a usage message for
RCS. It means that you have an old version of
RCS (probably supplied with your operating
system), as well as an old version of CVS.
CVS 1.9.18 and earlier only work with RCS version 5 and
later; current versions of CVS do not run RCS programs.
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cvs [server aborted]: received broken pipe signal
This message can be caused by a loginfo program that fails to
read all of the log information from its standard input.
If you find it happening in any other circumstances,
please let us know as described in Dealing with bugs in CVS or this manual.
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'root' is not allowed to commit files
When committing a permanent change, CVS makes a log entry of
who committed the change. If you are committing the change logged
in as "root" (not under "su" or other root-priv giving program),
CVS cannot determine who is actually making the change.
As such, by default, CVS disallows changes to be committed by users
logged in as "root". (You can disable this option by passing the
--enable-rootcommit option to `configure' and recompiling CVS.
On some systems this means editing the appropriate `config.h' file
before building CVS.)
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Terminated with fatal signal 11
This message usually indicates that CVS (the server, if you're
using client/server mode) has run out of (virtual) memory.
Although CVS tries to catch the error and issue a more meaningful
message, there are many circumstances where that is not possible.
If you appear to have lots of memory available to the system,
the problem is most likely that you're running into a system-wide
limit on the amount of memory a single process can use or a
similar process-specific limit.
The mechanisms for displaying and setting such limits vary from
system to system, so you'll have to consult an expert for your
particular system if you don't know how to do that.
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Too many arguments!
This message is typically printed by the `log.pl'
script which is in the `contrib' directory in the
CVS source distribution. In some versions of
CVS, `log.pl' has been part of the default
CVS installation. The `log.pl' script gets
called from the `loginfo' administrative file.
Check that the arguments passed in `loginfo' match
what your version of `log.pl' expects. In
particular, the `log.pl' from CVS 1.3 and
older expects the log file as an argument whereas the
`log.pl' from CVS 1.5 and newer expects the
log file to be specified with a `-f' option. Of
course, if you don't need `log.pl' you can just
comment it out of `loginfo'.
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cvs [update aborted]: unexpected EOF reading file,v
See `EOF in key in RCS file'.
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cvs [login aborted]: unrecognized auth response from server
This message typically means that the server is not set
up properly. For example, if `inetd.conf' points
to a nonexistent cvs executable. To debug it further,
find the log file which inetd writes
(`/var/log/messages' or whatever inetd uses on
your system). For details, see Trouble making a connection to a CVS server, and
Setting up the server for password authentication.
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cvs commit: Up-to-date check failed for `file'
This means that someone else has committed a change to
that file since the last time that you did a cvs
update. So before proceeding with your cvs
commit you need to cvs update. CVS will merge
the changes that you made and the changes that the
other person made. If it does not detect any conflicts
it will report `M file' and you are ready
to cvs commit. If it detects conflicts it will
print a message saying so, will report `C file',
and you need to manually resolve the
conflict. For more details on this process see
Conflicts example.
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Usage: diff3 [-exEX3 [-i | -m] [-L label1 -L label3]] file1 file2 file3
| | Only one of [exEX3] allowed
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This indicates a problem with the installation of
diff3 and rcsmerge. Specifically
rcsmerge was compiled to look for GNU diff3, but
it is finding unix diff3 instead. The exact text of
the message will vary depending on the system. The
simplest solution is to upgrade to a current version of
CVS, which does not rely on external
rcsmerge or diff3 programs.
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warning: unrecognized response `text' from cvs server
If text contains a valid response (such as
`ok') followed by an extra carriage return
character (on many systems this will cause the second
part of the message to overwrite the first part), then
it probably means that you are using the `:ext:'
access method with a version of rsh, such as most
non-unix rsh versions, which does not by default
provide a transparent data stream. In such cases you
probably want to try `:server:' instead of
`:ext:'. If text is something else, this
may signify a problem with your CVS server.
Double-check your installation against the instructions
for setting up the CVS server.
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cvs commit: [time] waiting for user's lock in directory
This is a normal message, not an error. See
Several developers simultaneously attempting to run CVS, for more details.
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cvs commit: warning: editor session failed
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This means that the editor which CVS is using exits with a nonzero
exit status. Some versions of vi will do this even when there was not
a problem editing the file. If so, point the
CVSEDITOR environment variable to a small script
such as:
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cvs update: warning: file was lost
This means that the working copy of file has been deleted
but it has not been removed from CVS.
This is nothing to be concerned about,
the update will just recreate the local file from the repository.
(This is a convenient way to discard local changes to a file:
just delete it and then run cvs update.)
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cvs update: warning: file is not (any longer) pertinent
This means that the working copy of file has been deleted,
it has not been removed from CVS in the current working directory,
but it has been removed from CVS in some other working directory.
This is nothing to be concerned about,
the update would have removed the local file anyway.
This section concerns what to do if you are having
trouble making a connection to a CVS server. If
you are running the CVS command line client
running on Windows, first upgrade the client to
CVS 1.9.12 or later. The error reporting in
earlier versions provided much less information about
what the problem was. If the client is non-Windows,
CVS 1.9 should be fine.
If the error messages are not sufficient to track down
the problem, the next steps depend largely on which
access method you are using.
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:ext:
Try running the rsh program from the command line. For
example: "rsh servername cvs -v" should print CVS
version information. If this doesn't work, you need to
fix it before you can worry about CVS problems.
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:server:
You don't need a command line rsh program to use this
access method, but if you have an rsh program around,
it may be useful as a debugging tool. Follow the
directions given for :ext:.
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:pserver:
Errors along the lines of "connection refused" typically indicate
that inetd isn't even listening for connections on port 2401
whereas errors like "connection reset by peer",
"received broken pipe signal", "recv() from server: EOF",
or "end of file from server"
typically indicate that inetd is listening for
connections but is unable to start CVS (this is frequently
caused by having an incorrect path in `inetd.conf'
or by firewall software rejecting the connection).
"unrecognized auth response" errors are caused by a bad command
line in `inetd.conf', typically an invalid option or forgetting
to put the `pserver' command at the end of the line.
Another less common problem is invisible control characters that
your editor "helpfully" added without you noticing.
One good debugging tool is to "telnet servername
2401". After connecting, send any text (for example
"foo" followed by return). If CVS is working
correctly, it will respond with
| | cvs [pserver aborted]: bad auth protocol start: foo
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If instead you get:
| | Usage: cvs [cvs-options] command [command-options-and-arguments]
...
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then you're missing the `pserver' command at the end of the
line in `inetd.conf'; check to make sure that the entire command
is on one line and that it's complete.
Likewise, if you get something like:
| | Unknown command: `pserved'
CVS commands are:
add Add a new file/directory to the repository
...
|
then you've misspelled `pserver' in some way. If it isn't
obvious, check for invisible control characters (particularly
carriage returns) in `inetd.conf'.
If it fails to work at all, then make sure inetd is working
right. Change the invocation in `inetd.conf' to run the
echo program instead of cvs. For example:
| | 2401 stream tcp nowait root /bin/echo echo hello
|
After making that change and instructing inetd to
re-read its configuration file, "telnet servername
2401" should show you the text hello and then the
server should close the connection. If this doesn't
work, you need to fix it before you can worry about
CVS problems.
On AIX systems, the system will often have its own
program trying to use port 2401. This is AIX's problem
in the sense that port 2401 is registered for use with
CVS. I hear that there is an AIX patch available
to address this problem.
Another good debugging tool is the `-d'
(debugging) option to inetd. Consult your system
documentation for more information.
If you seem to be connecting but get errors like:
| | cvs server: cannot open /root/.cvsignore: Permission denied
cvs [server aborted]: can't chdir(/root): Permission denied
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then you probably haven't specified `-f' in `inetd.conf'.
(In releases prior to CVS 1.11.1, this problem can be caused by
your system setting the $HOME environment variable
for programs being run by inetd. In this case, you can either
have inetd run a shell script that unsets $HOME and then runs
CVS, or you can use env to run CVS with a pristine
environment.)
If you can connect successfully for a while but then can't,
you've probably hit inetd's rate limit.
(If inetd receives too many requests for the same service
in a short period of time, it assumes that something is wrong
and temporarily disables the service.)
Check your inetd documentation to find out how to adjust the
rate limit (some versions of inetd have a single rate limit,
others allow you to set the limit for each service separately.)
Here is a list of problems which do not fit into the
above categories. They are in no particular order.
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On Windows, if there is a 30 second or so delay when
you run a CVS command, it may mean that you have
your home directory set to `C:/', for example (see
HOMEDRIVE and HOMEPATH in
All environment variables which affect CVS). CVS expects the home
directory to not end in a slash, for example `C:'
or `C:\cvs'.
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If you are running CVS 1.9.18 or older, and
cvs update finds a conflict and tries to
merge, as described in Conflicts example, but
doesn't tell you there were conflicts, then you may
have an old version of RCS. The easiest solution
probably is to upgrade to a current version of
CVS, which does not rely on external RCS
programs.
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