Re: CVS file permissions problems

[Mark D. Baushke]

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Ruben Diez <rdiez@activenav.com> writes:

> Hi again:
> 
> I just wasted considerable time installing CVS because of file-permission
> issues. I must admit I'm no expert, but I feel more can be done in the
> manual to help the likes of me busy people.
> 
> In my pserver CVS system, I'm user "rdiez", and Linux has automatically
> created an "rdiez" group too. I'm also a member of the cvs_repos_users
> group.
> 
> Whenever I check anything in, CVS changes the ,v file so that it's owned by
> me, but it also changes the ,v file group, something I didn't expect. So I
> ended up with this:
> 
> ls -la  blah_blah/my_dir
>  -rwxrwx---  1 root   cvs_repos_users  37316 Apr  1 17:50 my_lovely_file,v*
>  -rwxrwx---  1 rdiez  rdiez             8548 Apr  1 17:50
> I_just_checked_in_a_change.h,v*
> 
> The key thing missing from the manual is that other CVS users, even if they
> are members of the cvs_repos_users group, need at least read access to file
> "I_just_checked_in_a_change.h,v" in order to check in further changes, or
> even to "cvs update" on them.
> 
> This is despite the fact that my_dir's permissions look like this:
> 
>  drwxrwx---    5 root     cvs_repos_users     4096 Apr  2 14:03 ./
> 
> Why CVS has to change the file's group is beyond me. But at least if it's
> documented more clearly it would help.
> 
> Thanks a lot, and keep up the good work,
>   Ruben

On Linux, you will need to do

   chgrp cvs_respos_users blah_blah/my_dir
   chmod g+s blah_blah/my_dir

to fix your problem. cvs is assuming that the filesystem has group
persist for newly created files. All new versions of a file go thru
being created as a temporary ,foo, before being renamed as foo,v as the
last step. Many operating systems do not require the directory to have
the set-gid bit set for this behavior, but both Linux and Solaris do.

        -- Mark
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