Import problem

[Peg]

I'm new to cvs.  I've created a repository:

cvs -d /export/home/alexCVS init

Then I import the files in /export/home/alexHome/project:

cd /export/home/alexHome/project
cvs import -m "message" project dummy start

This seems to work and reports no errors.  However when I 

cd /export/home/alexHome 

and do 

cvs checkout project

I get ? next to all the directories, and I can't cvs update any files.

Thanks for any help.