Q: Are there ways to safely use an NFS mount as one's CVSROOT?

A: There is always a danger of data corruption in such a configuration, because NFS is inherently somewhat fallible, and because CVS has no checksums or other integrity-checking. To reduce the risk, consider the following steps:

1. Use the NFS v. 3 client and server code provided by Dave Higgin's NFS v. 3 client and H.J. Lu's NFS v. 3 kernel-based daemon to selected 2.2 kernels, plus the latest nfs-utils package and an NFS v. 3 patch for the "mount" utility. For links to the necessary files, visit the Linux NFS Project site at http://nfs.sourceforge.net/. Because this NFS v. 3 software is still UDP-only (no support for NFS over TCP), there is still an inherent risk of lost information.

2. Monitor your CVS logs for stale CVS lockfiles, and check the integrity of your CVS trees when you see them.

3. Ensure that you have good daily backups, as NFS-mounting the CVS trees creates greater potential for the users accidentally deleting files.

If you can possibly arrange a non-NFS configuration, it would on the whole be quite a bit safer, even given all the above precautions.