[rancid] RANCID and CVSWEB

[Chris Bell]

I spent the better part of yesterday, last night, and this morning trying to figure out how to get cvsweb to work with RANCID. I'm running Redhat 5.x and have Rancid installed to the default directory path /usr/local/rancid. For cvsweb, I am using 3.0.6-4. In my cvsweb.conf (/etc/cvsweb/cvsweb.conf) I have this config:

@CVSrepositories = (
'local' => ['Local Repository', '/var/cvs'],
'rancid' => ['rancid', '/usr/local/rancid/var/CVS/']
# 'freebsd' => ['FreeBSD', '/var/ncvs'],
# 'openbsd' => ['OpenBSD', '/var/ncvs'],
# 'netbsd' => ['NetBSD', '/var/ncvs'],
# 'ruby' => ['Ruby', '/var/anoncvs/ruby'],

That path, points to the CVSROOT for Rancid. When I browse to ...http://server/cgi-bin/cvsweb.cgi/, the local repo is available, but there is no drop down box to go to the 'rancid' repo. If I comment out the local repo in the cvsweb.conf, I get this error when trying to browse to the same url:

Error: No valid CVS roots found! See @CVSrepositories in the configuration file (/etc/cvsweb/cvsweb.conf)

This leads me to believe that there is not a permission issue on the .conf file, because if there was - changing by commenting out a repo would not make a difference.

Any idea on what I'm doing wrong? Sorry if this has been covered, but I honestly couldn't find it anyplace that offered a solution. Several discussions about it on the cvsweb list, but nothing that offered a solution. This worked like a charm and out of the box with Ubuntu when I did it a couple of years ago -- but unfortunately I'm not able to build this box on Ubuntu, has to be Redhat.

Christopher Bell, CCNA
Network Operations Manager
Tower Hill Insurance Group, Inc.
352-332-8800, ext 1734

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[Ryan West]

Chris,

Looks like you're missing a trailing comma.

This is a working cvsweb install with RANCID:

@CVSrepositories = (
# 'local' => ['Local Repository', '/var/lib/cvs'],
'neteng' => ['NetEng Devices', '/usr/local/rancid/var/CVS'],
);
$cvstreedefault = 'neteng';

Also, I'm sure you don't want to hear this right now, but I would recommend WebSVN whenever you're ready to make the change from CVS. It's a little unnerving when you convert, but I'm quite happy with the WebSVN interface and the development team there is more active.

-ryan

[Todd Heide]

I have run into this same problem with Fedora Core. It turned out to be
the permissions in the directories where the CVS files are stored. They
need to be readable by Apache.

drwxrwxr-x 3 Rancid Rancid 4096 Sep 10 08:04 configs
drwxrwxr-x 10 Rancid netadm 4096 Jul 16 15:43 rancid

This was the only way I was able to get CVSweb to work with Rancid. I
think the default setting was

drwxrwx--- 10 Rancid netadm 4096 Jul 16 15:43 rancid

Thanks
Todd
Nothing ever goes as planned, Its a hell of a notion,
Even pharaohs turn to sand, Like a drop in the ocean

-----Original Message-----
From: rancid-disc...@shrubbery.net
[mailto:rancid-disc...@shrubbery.net] On Behalf Of Chris Bell
Sent: Thursday, September 10, 2009 8:17 AM
To: 'rancid-...@shrubbery.net'
Subject: [rancid] RANCID and CVSWEB

[Chris Bell]

Hi.. thanks, I added the comma, but it made no difference. I've actually tried it both ways. I've also tried changing the cvstreedefault variable to 'rancid' from 'local' and it makes no difference.

To be honest, I know little to nothing about CVS other than how it works with Rancid - which is the only thing I use it for. I've heard before that using SVN is better however.

[Chris Bell]

I keep thinking it's permissions too, but I don't see a problem with the permissions:

/usr/local/rancid/
drwxr-xr-x 9 rancid rancid 4096 Sep 9 15:46 var

/usr/local/rancid/var/
drwxrwxr-x 7 rancid rancid 4096 Sep 9 15:46 CVS
drwxr-x--- 4 rancid rancid 4096 Sep 9 15:57 configs1
drwxr-x--- 4 rancid rancid 4096 Sep 9 16:05 configs2
drwxr-x--- 4 rancid rancid 4096 Sep 9 16:06 configs3
drwxr-x--- 4 rancid rancid 4096 Sep 9 16:07 configs4

[root@blah ~]# ls -l /usr/local/rancid/var/CVS/
total 24
drwxrwxr-x 3 rancid rancid 4096 Sep 9 16:07 CVSROOT
-rw-r----- 1 rancid rancid 58 Sep 9 15:46 Entries.Log
drwxrwxr-x 3 rancid rancid 4096 Sep 9 15:57 configs1
drwxrwxr-x 3 rancid rancid 4096 Sep 9 16:05 configs2
drwxrwxr-x 3 rancid rancid 4096 Sep 9 16:06 configs3
drwxrwxr-x 3 rancid rancid 4096 Sep 9 16:07 configs4

and on the /etc/cvsweb/cvsweb.conf

-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 22997 Sep 10 13:32 cvsweb.conf

-----Original Message-----
From: Todd Heide [mailto:To...@equivoice.com]
Sent: Thursday, September 10, 2009 9:24 AM
To: Chris Bell; rancid-...@shrubbery.net

[Chris Bell]

Actually that happens either way .... with the local repo commented out or not.

-----Original Message-----
From: Chris Bell
Sent: Thursday, September 10, 2009 9:39 AM
To: 'Ryan West'
Subject: RE: RANCID and CVSWEB

Only when I remove the 'local' variable.

[Thu Sep 10 13:30:23 2009] [error] [client x.x.x.x] Root '/usr/local/rancid/var/CVS' defined in @CVSrepositories is not a directory, entry ignored at /var/www/cgi-bin/cvsweb.cgi line 481.
[Thu Sep 10 13:30:24 2009] [error] [client x.x.x.x] Root '/usr/local/rancid/var/CVS' defined in @CVSrepositories is not a directory, entry ignored at /var/www/cgi-bin/cvsweb.cgi line 481.
[Thu Sep 10 13:30:25 2009] [error] [client x.x.x.x] Root '/usr/local/rancid/var/CVS' defined in @CVSrepositories is not a directory, entry ignored at /var/www/cgi-bin/cvsweb.cgi line 481.
[Thu Sep 10 13:30:25 2009] [error] [client x.x.x.x] Root '/usr/local/rancid/var/CVS' defined in @CVSrepositories is not a directory, entry ignored at /var/www/cgi-bin/cvsweb.cgi line 481.
[Thu Sep 10 13:30:26 2009] [error] [client x.x.x.x] Root '/usr/local/rancid/var/CVS' defined in @CVSrepositories is not a directory, entry ignored at /var/www/cgi-bin/cvsweb.cgi line 481.
[Thu Sep 10 13:30:28 2009] [error] [client x.x.x.x] Root '/usr/local/rancid/var/CVS' defined in @CVSrepositories is not a directory, entry ignored at /var/www/cgi-bin/cvsweb.cgi line 481

-----Original Message-----
From: Ryan West [mailto:rw...@zyedge.com]
Sent: Thursday, September 10, 2009 9:33 AM
To: Chris Bell
Subject: RE: RANCID and CVSWEB

I don't use either for anything but RANCID as well. Do your apache logs have anything of value?

[Ryan West]

Chris,

Can you show the contents of your CVS directory?

rancid@netman:~/var/CVS$ ls
CVSROOT noc

-ryan

[Chris Bell]

Hmmm ..

[root@blah ~]# ls /var/cvs/
[root@blah ~]#

Am I missing a symbolic link or something?

[Ryan West]

That's a full path from root. Try 'ls /usr/local/rancid/var/CVS' instead.

[Chris Bell]

Sorry -- I just caught that and was getting it for you..

[root@blah ~]# ls /usr/local/rancid/var/CVS/
CVSROOT Entries.Log config1 config2 config3 config4
[root@blah ~]#

[Todd Heide]

Notice on mine the permissions are drwxrwxr-x, I had to add write
permissions for it to work.
Try adding write to it and see what happens.

Yours

usr/local/rancid/
drwxr-xr-x 9 rancid rancid 4096 Sep 9 15:46 var

Mine

drwxrwxr-x 10 Rancid netadm 4096 Jul 16 15:43 rancid

Thanks

[Chris Bell]

That did it ... curious though because the permissions on my Deb install are drwxr-xr-x 9 for /home/rancid.

Thanks for everyone's help ... as always this is a fantastic group. I hope I'll be able to add something beneficial to it one day.

[Todd Heide]

I had tried everything others have suggested but for some reason that
was the only thing that worked with Fedora. Since the server is private
on my network, I am not too worried about the permissions, if it were
public, that would be a wholly different issue.

[Chris Bell]

I fixed this another way actually when I mentioned this to our Linux admin. Rather than 775 the /usr/local/rancid directory, I put it back to 755 and added the apache user to the rancid group. Worked like a charm.