I configured the CVS server on a remote fedora 6 (FC6) server today. It was a bit of a pain but only because of the lack of clear documentation. I needed a remote server to run CVS so that any client could checkout a project and then checking/update to a central server. The first thing I neeed to do was ensure that ssh between the client and server required no password. Otherwise it would be prompting me for a password at each ‘cvs’ command.
The first step was to configure the CVS repository on the cvs server:
cvs -d /var/cvs init
I chose /var/cvs because that seemed to be where fedora put it by default.
I next needed to setup server access which works through xinted. I assumed that I could set cvs up as a normal service in /etc/rc.d/init and manage it through chkconfig, but I was unable to find such a service (if anyone knows of one please let me know!) So I needed to install xinetd first:
yum install xinted
 Next, edit the configuration for the cvs server under xinted by editing:
/etc/xinetd.d/cvs
Switch the service on by changing the line:
‘disable     = yes’ to  ’disable = no’
The rest of the config I left as default since I was using the default setup.
Then I started the xinetd server:
service inetd start
I tested the operation by opening a hole in the firewall for port 2401 and telnet’ing in.
For the client I edited my ~/.bash_profile and added a line for the cvs stuff
# tell cvs to use rsh
CVS_RSH=ssh
export CVS_RSH
# the path to the cvs executable on the remote machine
CVS_SERVER=/usr/bin/cvs
export CVS_SERVER
CVSROOT=”:ext:myUserName@cvsServerName:/var/cvs”
export CVSROOT #login replace myUserName and cvsServerName with appropriate settings
CVSEDITOR=”emacs -nw” # because vi sucks ass!
export CVSEDITOR