| [ < ] | [ > ] | [ << ] | [ Up ] | [ >> ] | [Top] | [Contents] | [Index] | [ ? ] |
If you are having trouble with CVS, this appendix may help. If there is a particular error message which you are seeing, then you can look up the message alphabetically. If not, you can look through the section on other problems to see if your problem is mentioned there.
| F.1 Partial list of error messages | Partial list of CVS errors | |
| F.2 Trouble making a connection to a CVS server | ||
| F.3 Other common problems | Problems not readily listed by error message |
| [ < ] | [ > ] | [ << ] | [ Up ] | [ >> ] | [Top] | [Contents] | [Index] | [ ? ] |
Here is a partial list of error messages that you may see from CVS. It is not a complete list—CVS is capable of printing many, many error messages, often with parts of them supplied by the operating system, but the intention is to list the common and/or potentially confusing error messages.
The messages are alphabetical, but introductory text such as ‘cvs update: ’ is not considered in ordering them.
In some cases the list includes messages printed by old versions of CVS (partly because users may not be sure which version of CVS they are using at any particular moment).
file:line: Assertion 'text' failedThe exact format of this message may vary depending on your system. It indicates a bug in CVS, which can be handled as described in Dealing with bugs in CVS or this manual.
cvs command: authorization failed: server host rejected accessThis is a generic response when trying to connect to a
pserver server which chooses not to provide a
specific reason for denying authorization. Check that
the username and password specified are correct and
that the CVSROOT specified is allowed by ‘--allow-root’
in ‘inetd.conf’. See Direct connection with password authentication.
cvs command: conflict: removed file was modified by second partyThis message indicates that you removed a file, and someone else modified it. To resolve the conflict, first run ‘cvs add file’. If desired, look at the other party’s modification to decide whether you still want to remove it. If you don’t want to remove it, stop here. If you do want to remove it, proceed with ‘cvs remove file’ and commit your removal.
cannot change permissions on temporary directoryOperation not permitted |
This message has been happening in a non-reproducible,
occasional way when we run the client/server testsuite,
both on Red Hat Linux 3.0.3 and 4.1. We haven’t been
able to figure out what causes it, nor is it known
whether it is specific to Linux (or even to this
particular machine!). If the problem does occur on
other unices, ‘Operation not permitted’ would be
likely to read ‘Not owner’ or whatever the system
in question uses for the unix EPERM error. If
you have any information to add, please let us know as
described in Dealing with bugs in CVS or this manual. If you experience this error
while using CVS, retrying the operation which
produced it should work fine.
cvs [server aborted]: Cannot check out files into the repository itselfThe obvious cause for this message (especially for
non-client/server CVS) is that the CVS root
is, for example, ‘/usr/local/cvsroot’ and you try
to check out files when you are in a subdirectory, such
as ‘/usr/local/cvsroot/test’. However, there is a
more subtle cause, which is that the temporary
directory on the server is set to a subdirectory of the
root (which is also not allowed). If this is the
problem, set the temporary directory to somewhere else,
for example ‘/var/tmp’; see TMPDIR in
All environment variables which affect CVS, for how to set the
temporary directory.
cannot commit files as 'root'See ‘'root' is not allowed to commit files’.
cannot open CVS/Entries for reading: No such file or directoryThis generally indicates a CVS internal error, and can be handled as with other CVS bugs (see section Dealing with bugs in CVS or this manual). Usually there is a workaround—the exact nature of which would depend on the situation but which hopefully could be figured out.
cvs [init aborted]: cannot open CVS/Root: No such file or directoryThis message is harmless. Provided it is not accompanied by other errors, the operation has completed successfully. This message should not occur with current versions of CVS, but it is documented here for the benefit of CVS 1.9 and older.
cvs server: cannot open /root/.cvsignore: Permission deniedcvs [server aborted]: can't chdir(/root): Permission deniedcvs [checkout aborted]: cannot rename file file to CVS/,,file: Invalid argumentThis message has been reported as intermittently happening with CVS 1.9 on Solaris 2.5. The cause is unknown; if you know more about what causes it, let us know as described in Dealing with bugs in CVS or this manual.
cvs [command aborted]: cannot start server via rcmdThis, unfortunately, is a rather nonspecific error
message which CVS 1.9 will print if you are
running the CVS client and it is having trouble
connecting to the server. Current versions of CVS
should print a much more specific error message. If
you get this message when you didn’t mean to run the
client at all, you probably forgot to specify
:local:, as described in The Repository.
ci: file,v: bad diff output line: Binary files - and /tmp/T2a22651 differCVS 1.9 and older will print this message when trying to check in a binary file if RCS is not correctly installed. Re-read the instructions that came with your RCS distribution and the INSTALL file in the CVS distribution. Alternately, upgrade to a current version of CVS, which checks in files itself rather than via RCS.
cvs checkout: could not check out fileWith CVS 1.9, this can mean that the co program
(part of RCS) returned a failure. It should be
preceded by another error message, however it has been
observed without another error message and the cause is
not well-understood. With the current version of CVS,
which does not run co, if this message occurs
without another error message, it is definitely a CVS
bug (see section Dealing with bugs in CVS or this manual).
cvs [login aborted]: could not find out home directoryThis means that you need to set the environment
variables that CVS uses to locate your home directory.
See the discussion of HOME, HOMEDRIVE, and HOMEPATH in
All environment variables which affect CVS.
cvs update: could not merge revision rev of file: No such file or directoryCVS 1.9 and older will print this message if there was
a problem finding the rcsmerge program. Make
sure that it is in your PATH, or upgrade to a
current version of CVS, which does not require
an external rcsmerge program.
cvs [update aborted]: could not patch file: No such file or directoryThis means that there was a problem finding the
patch program. Make sure that it is in your
PATH. Note that despite appearances the message
is not referring to whether it can find file.
If both the client and the server are running a current
version of CVS, then there is no need for an
external patch program and you should not see this
message. But if either client or server is running
CVS 1.9, then you need patch.
cvs update: could not patch file; will refetchThis means that for whatever reason the client was unable to apply a patch that the server sent. The message is nothing to be concerned about, because inability to apply the patch only slows things down and has no effect on what CVS does.
dying gasps from server unexpectedThere is a known bug in the server for e" align="left">
This document was generated by Build Daemon on February 9, 2012 using texi2html 1.82.