Re: Unable to commit to CVS

[Malcolm Tredinnick <malcolm commsecure com au>]

On Mon, 2003-08-11 at 05:28, Eugene O'Connor wrote:
> Hi all,
> 
> I have the GNOME 2.4 Desktop User Guide lined up to commit to CVS, but I
> get the following message, over and over:
> 
> cvs server: [15:16:01] waiting for gnomecvs's lock in
> /cvs/gnome/gnome-user-docs/gnome2-user-guide/C/figures
> cvs server: [15:16:31] waiting for gnomecvs's lock in
> /cvs/gnome/gnome-user-docs/gnome2-user-guide/C/figures
> cvs server: [15:17:01] waiting for gnomecvs's lock in
> /cvs/gnome/gnome-user-docs/gnome2-user-guide/C/figures
> 
> Anyone any idea what's going on? Is this happening because a load of
> people are trying to commit at the same time? I'm going to give up for
> now and try again first thing tomorrow.

For future use: you may sometimes be blocked on a message like this for
a couple of minutes if you are following another update around the tree
(i.e. somebody is just ahead of you). Your cvs process will retry every
30 seconds to gain a lock in that directory.

If the problem persists for five minutes or so, then somebody's cvs
process has terminated abnormally and an admin needs to go in and remove
the lock file from the directory. Depending upon how the CVS repository
is set up, this lock file will either be in the directory mentioned in
the message (and will look like "#gnomecvs" or something similar -- I
cannot remember the precise naming right now, but it's
hash-something-involving-the-username) or it may be in another parallel
directory structure (the setup if some people have read-only access and
others have read-write access -- probably not the case for us). In
either case, the CVS admins will know, or at least be able to hunt it
down.

Cheers,
Malcolm