Section 6.6. Server Environment Variables

6.6. Server Environment Variables

CVS reads some of the calling user's environment variables whenever you run a command for which the variable may affect the results. These variables, shown in the following list, are read and used by the process that runs on the repository's server. Note that these variables must be in the calling user's environment on the repository server, so different users may cause different behaviors.

CVS_SERVER_SLEEP

Delays the start of the client/server process by CVS_SERVER_SLEEP seconds to allow a debugger to be attached to it. Use this variable only when debugging the server in client/server mode.

In local-access mode, CVS uses both client and server environment variables.

CVSUMASK

Sets the default permissions of files in the repository. See "Securing Your Projects" earlier in this chapter.

PATH

Locates any programs whose paths are not coded into the CVS program. It is also used for the programs called in the scripting files. The PATH variable is less important to CVS than it was when the rcs, diff, and patch programs CVS now uses were not included with CVS.

TMPDIR

Sets the temporary directory CVS stores data in. It defaults to /tmp. CVS creates temporary files with mkstemp (BSD 4.3) if possible. It determines what is available at compile time, and if it can't find mkstemp it tries tempnam (SVID 3), mktemp (BSD 4.3), or tmpnam (POSIX), in that order. If it uses tmpnam, it cannot use the TMPDIR environment variable, and files will be created in /tmp.

Currently, some parts of CVS use /tmp, regardless of the contents of TMPDIR. This is a bug and should be fixed in a later version.