When I execute a CVS update command at work, I often get the following error:

[caran@mater safetypublic]$ cvs -q update -AdP
: No such file or directoryectory /home/cvs/safetypublic/rsvp
cvs update: skipping directory rsvp

No such directoryectory? What the heck is that??

Most of my colleagues don’t work directly on the Linux-based web servers. They use TortoiseCVS on their workstations using a shared drive. For some reason, it occasionally (but not always) will convert the files in the CVS directory to DOS line endings.

The fix is simple. Use the dos2unix command to reset the CVS files to Unix line endings. It’s the repository file that causes the error.

[caran@mater safetypublic]$ cd rsvp/
[caran@mater rsvp]$ dos2unix CVS/*
dos2unix: converting file CVS/Entries to UNIX format ...
dos2unix: converting file CVS/Repository to UNIX format ...
[caran@mater rsvp]$ cvs -q update -AdP
M index.html
M rsvp-thankyou.html
[caran@mater rsvp]$ 

NOTE: Interestingly, a colleague of mine gets a slightly different error, but the cause and cure are both the same:

: No such file or directoryctory