[cvsnt] :ssh: unreliable? Is there a known issue?

[Bulgrien, Kevin]

Disclaimer:  I'm not a CVS-NT user myself as I use a Linux client,
but I support people who use TortoiseCVS, which in turn apparently
uses a version of CVS-NT with their GUI client.  I have posted to
the TortoiseCVS list, but I do not think the buggy behavior I am
seeing is a TortoiseCVS bug, but rather in CVS-NT since I see the
same problem when I run cvs.exe from a Windows XP CMD prompt.

  (CVSNT) 2.0.62.1817

Is there a known issue list?  I found a trouble ticket list, a wiki,
and looked back through the release notes to versions newer than
2.0.62.1817, and did not find anything that seemed to relate to
the :ssh: protocol.

Is there a known issue with :ssh:?  The following is a bit of a
description of what we saw happening.

---

:ext: (Secure shell) is the transport we have always used with remote
CVS to our server.  Recently, trouble was occurred with a sandbox that
was checked out using the :ssh: (SSL) method.  At the time we were not
certain exactly what the cause of the problems was, but I have seen a
TortoiseCVS post that strengthens our initial conclusion that CVS-NT
(cvs.exe) may have been to blame.  Changing the sandbox to an :ext:
checkout seemed to at least clear up one of the issues.  Unfortunately,
the issues with sandbox files that were broken had been fixed by the
time we discovered that :ssh: was being used instead of :ext: so it was
not possible to see if simply changing the protocol fixed all of the
issues.

- Big checkouts would sometimes hang (all files probably checked out
  ok, but the process would not end.  Updating after aborting the
  checkout tended to work.)
- Diff on some files would hang.
- Certain special updates would hang.  Files might be renamed to .#blah
  in typical CVS fashion, but the process would not end.

The above were observed through a TortoiseCVS dialog, but we tried
some operations with cvs.exe not going through the GUI, and saw the
same results unguified.

In some cases, it appeared that you could delete the file for which
the operation failed, do an update to replace the file in the
sandbox, and the "problem" would go away.  Sometimes it was necessary
to delete the entire directory and restore it by doing an update.

The Entries file seemed to have odd dates and time for the files if
the bugs appeared.  The time stamp did not match the server's CVS
time stamp.  After "fixing" the file, the time stamps would match.
It is not clear if this is related the problem behavior or not.

The difficulty was observed TortoiseCVS 1.8.17 (CVSNT) 2.0.62.1817,
1.8.9 (CVSNT ?), and 1.9.6 (CVSNT) 2.0.62.1817.  We also tried going
back to TortoiseCVS 1.6.1, but apparently the version of cvs nt
packaged with it did not support :ssh: at all.

--- 
Kevin R. Bulgrien
Product Engineer

General Dynamics C4 Systems                   http://www.tripointglobal.com/
VertexRSI
1915 Harrison Road                                    Tel: 903-295-1480 x288
Longview, TX 75604-5438                               Fax: 903-295-1479