cvs [login aborted]: unrecognized auth response from ... cvs pserver: cannot open /home/cvs/cvsroot/CVSROOT/config: Permission denied

[ramesh]

I have been struggling with this error for a day now. I don't have any
NFS file systems. I did search the archives but couldn't find anything.
Using Fedora Core 4.

In my /etc/xinetd.d/cvspserver file, I have:
service cvspserver
{
        id                      = cvspserver
        disable                 = no
        port                    = 2401
        socket_type             = stream
        protocol                = tcp
        wait                    = no
        user                    = root
        server                  = /usr/bin/cvs
        server_args     = --allow-root=/home/cvs/cvsroot -f pserver
        log                     = /var/log/cvslog

}

which I assume would mean that the cvs server is running as root. The
/home/cvs/cvsroot/CVSROOT/config file is readable by root.

But I get the same error:
Logging in to :pserver:address@hidden:2401/home/cvs/cvsroot
CVS password:
cvs [login aborted]: unrecognized auth response from hostname: cvs
pserver: cannot open /home/cvs/cvsroot/CVSROOT/config: Permission
denied

What could be happening here? My linux version; 2.6.11-1.1369_FC4

my config file has this:
SystemAuth=no
#no passwd file, I want it to use the /etc/passwd for auth.

This is what I see for:
"strace -f -o /tmp/zzz -p 12999"

13012 mmap2(NULL, 4096, PROT_READ|PROT_WRITE,
MAP_PRIVATE|MAP_ANONYMOUS, -1, 0) = 0xb7f9c000
13012 read(0, "BEGIN VERIFICATION REQUEST\n/home"..., 1024) = 92
13012 open("/home/cvs/cvsroot/CVSROOT/config", O_RDONLY) = -1 EACCES
(Permission denied)
13012 write(2, "cvs", 3)                = 3
13012 write(2, " ", 1)                  = 1
13012 write(2, "pserver", 7)            = 7
13012 write(2, ": ", 2)                 = 2
13012 write(2, "cannot open ", 12)      = 12
13012 write(2, "/home/cvs/cvsroot/CVSROOT/config", 32) = 32
13012 write(2, ": ", 2)                 = 2
13012 write(2, "Permission denied", 17) = 17
13012 write(2, "\n", 1)                 = 1
13012 open("/home/cvs/cvsroot/CVSROOT/passwd", O_RDONLY) = -1 EACCES
(Permission denied)
13012 write(2, "cvs", 3)                = 3