Newbie: nonsensical documentation

[kynn]

I'm being forced by my supervisor to start using CVS, which I hate.
The reason I hate it is that every time I've tried to read the
documentation I've found it either incomprehensible or unreliable.  In
my experience, this is par for the course for free software, and
that's why I don't touch it with a ten-foot pole.  But now my job
depends on it, so I desperately need every bit of help I can get...

On page 29, one is instructed to do this:

  $ cd $WDIR
  $ cvs import -m "Imported sources" yoyodine/$RDIR yoyo start
  $ cd ..

I've done this (though, of course, I've changed "yoyodine/$RDIR" to
"MyModule", and "yoyo" to $USER).  Next, the instructions say to do
try this:

  $ cvs checkout yoyodine/$RDIR

so I try:

  $ cvs -n checkout MyModule

but I get an error message:

  cvs checkout: cannot chdir to MyModule: Not a directory
  cvs checkout: ignoring module MyModule

Why am I getting the "cannot chdir" error message?  My CVSROOT
variable is properly set, and the directory $CVSROOT/MyModule exists:

  % ls -ld $CVSROOT/MyModule
  drwxrwsr-x    3 kynn   cvs          4096 Mar 11 11:49 
/usr/local/cvsroot/MyModule

Thank you for all your help.

kj

P.S. please Cc me in your replies.