A problem with CVS commands that modify the repository

[Reinstein, Shlomo]

Hi,
We've been working on our CVS repository for a while, and everything used to
be ok.
Starting today, we are getting messages like the following:
cvs [commit aborted]: could not open lock file
`some-path-in-the-repository/some-file,' : File exists
We got similar messages when trying to tag the repository.
Looking into the repository I found out two files for some-file:
*       "some-file,v" - this is the usual (RCS) file in the repository, and
*       ",some-file," - this is the new version of the (RCS) file in the
repository, which should replace "some-file,v".
Looking at the permissions in that repository directory, I noticed that all
",v" files were read-only. Changing them to writable (using 'chmod +w *,v')
solved the problem.

My questions:
1. Should the files in the repository be writable?
2. How can it be that we used to commit and tag without a problem, and
suddenly we are unable to do so (in the same repository directories)?

Thanks,
Shlomo