please help, cvs problem

[Patrick Amirian]

Hi and thanks for reading,

I'm trying to set up a cvs repository,
this is how I'm doing it,

create the directory /home/patrick/cvsroot
then I do
cvs -d /home/patrick/cvsroot init

then I create my xinetd.conf file oh by the way I'm on RH 7.0

service cvspserver
{
      socket_type     = stream
      protocol        = tcp
      wait            = no
      user            = root
      passenv         =
      server          = /usr/bin/cvs
      server_args     = --allow-root=/home/pamirian/cvsroot pserver
}

and then I create a passwd file in /home/patrick/cvsroot/CVSROOT directory

when I do

cvs -d :pserver:address@hidden:/home/patrick/cvsroot login
it asks for the pass, I type the pass and it works great

BUT,
when I do
cvs -d :pserver:address@hidden:/home/patrick/cvsroot import -m "first 
test" test patrick start
it also works but at first it gives me this message,

cvs server: cannot open /root/.cvsignore: Permission denied.

then when I do a
cvs -d :pserver:address@hidden:/home/patrick/cvsroot checkout test

it gives me,
cvs server: cannot open /root/.cvsignore : Permission denied
cvs [server aborted]: can't chdir (/root): Permission denied

how can I fix this ?

please don't point me at howtos, I already have 2 cvs books and few cvs 
related documents but they don't cover this errors...

thank you very much for you time, I really appreciate it.
-Patrick