• Your public key has not been uploaded to Sourceforge, or it hasn't had the required 6 hours to apply yet.
  You can check if your public key has taken effect yet by logging in and clicking on "account options". Down at the bottom, there's a section called "shell account information", and it'll list the number of CVS/SSH authorized keys you have. If you've uploaded your key and it still says 0, then wait a little while.

• Your private key isn't properly loaded into Pageant
  This is the most common problem. Make sure Pageant is running (it just exists in the system tray by default), and when you open it from the system tray, make sure your private key is listed in the text box. If not, click "add key" and open your private key.

  Yes, keys must be reloaded into pageant every time the program is started. Yes, it's annoying. Keeping the keys loaded is on the "to do" development list for Putty. I'll make an announcement if it happens (don't hold your breath though).

Use Putty to open an ssh connection to "cvs.sourceforge.net". It'll ask if you want to cache the server's key; hit "Yes". If you have your public key set up correctly, the window will say something and then close. Otherwise, you'll put in your password and it'll close. CVS should now work (or at the bare minimum not have the same problem).

• In Windows XP: Right click on "My Computer", and choose "Properties". Click on the "Advanced" tab. At the bottom of the window, there's an "Environment Variables" button. The PATH variable should already exist as a System variable, and the other two (CVS_RSH and CVSROOT) have to be created.

• In Windows 98: 98 doesn't provide a GUI for setting environment variables. You have to directly modify C:\autoexec.bat, which is a batch file (set of commands) that is run at startup. Do not modify the stuff that's already in the file. Just add these lines to the bottom:

  set PATH=%PATH%; C:\path-to-putty\
set CVS_RSH=plink.exe
set CVS_ROOT=:ext:username@cvs.sourceforge.net:/cvsroot/cwruser/
  

  Where C:\path-to-putty\ is the directory that you stored the Putty Tools Suitte in, and username is your Sourceforge username. Either restart or re-run autoexec.bat to have these take effect.

  Note: This information is unverified - I couldn't access a 98 system to test this on, so I'm going off of previous knowledge and google.

A: Sourceforge was organized with the following intentions:

Mailing list: For discussion of ideas within the group.
Documentation System: For information from the group to everyone
Forum: For others to communicate with the group.

So when the core team is working out their standardized communications sytem, they'll use their mailing list (the "cwruser-core" list). When they want to let eveyone know what the standardized system is, they use the documentation system. When non-cure people want to give feedback or ask questions about it, they use the "core" forum.

• Make sure that "cvs.sourceforge.net" is spelled right in your CVSROOT (hey, it's happened to me a few times).
• Make sure you sent the CVS_RSH environment variable to "plink.exe"