Re: cvs admin command, potential problems

[Larry Jones]

Bret writes:
> 
> I was told to add a new user, which I didn't know the process.  After
> using cvs --help and cvs -H admin, I tried this command from the root
> of the project:
> cvs admin -a username

admin is an *extremely* dangerous command to use if you don't know what
you're doing.  What that command did was add that user to the (normally
empty) access list for every file in your project.  That means that no
one other than that user could use RCS to update any files (other than
the owner of the file or the superuser).  Fortunately, CVS doesn't pay
any attention to the access list, so you haven't screwed yourself too
badly.  If you want to put things back the way they're supposed to be,
do ``cvs admin -e''.

> Also, the ownership (user/group) of all files are cvsuser/other.  The
> Solaris admin recursively changed the group to "cvs" (which is the
> primary group of cvsuser)on all files and my new user can now update
> them.  But anytime something is updated, the group changes to "other".

Apparently, cvsuser's default group is "other", not "cvs" as you think. 
You may want to compare the entry in $CVSROOT/CVSROOT/passwd for your
new user to the entries for the other users -- it's possible that your
previous admin had things set up so that all the CVS users were mapped
to the same system user rather than setting things up properly.  If so,
you may just want to set cvsuser up the same way and continue in the
same vein.

To do things properly, see the section of the manual on repository file
permissions for guidance:

        <https://www.cvshome.org/docs/manual/cvs-1.11.18/cvs_2.html#SEC13>

-Larry Jones

It COULD'VE happened by accident! -- Calvin