Re: [Savannah-help-public] Re: firewalls blocking CVS

[dhruva <dhruvakm@gmail.com>]

Hello,
 Thank you very much for a detailed explaination of the comlexities
involved in providng such a service.
 I have no direct way to find out the reason due to which CVS port
(2401) is blocked. The earlier companies I worked for blocked that as
part of blocking a whole lot of ports. I could not find any particular
reason. The answer I usually got was, "if you do not need it, we do
not provide it". I had to respect their decision as Emacs was not a
requirement for my official work. In another firm, I was able to
convince them to an extent. They allowed me (just me) access to a
computer which was directly connected to the internet bypassing the
local firewall, that does not happen too often. In my current work
place, we use CVS internally. Maybe, that is the reason for preventing
the that port for external access. From what little I know, a version
control system is another form of easy means to deposit data
(versioned). May be, there exists a paranoid feaar that someone may
start depositing versioned copies of compay source code! Not sure
though.
 Due to all these restrictions, I ended up developing my own tool
"cvsget.pl" which got hosted on Savannah under non-gnu tools (it does
suffer in fundamental design) grown out of frustration by being
controlled by restrictive firewalls (in 2 days!). That used the
ViewCVS web front end and a command line based web (HTTP) downloader.
 The reason I bring up this topic is I find many companies/corporates
blocking CVS port. I do not want to argue either for or against it as
it is their resource and expected to be used purly for their own
benefit. Since there are a bunch of SCM that allow access (read only)
using the standard ports, it makes it a whole lot easier for us to
work on it during normal hours. Also, I use Emacs mainly at work, I
prefer to build it and use it on my work machine rather than at home
(I get very little time at home and hence even switching on the
computer at home is almost ruled out!).
 Currently, I am using the Emacs CVS mirror on mercurial (hg). That
works on port 80 (read only) and I get to follow the mainstream Emacs
development.

On 7/15/07, Sylvain Beucler <beuc@gnu.org> wrote:
>
> Note that ultimately, nothing forbids you from using a dedicated
> virtual server (9USD/mo) or any external machine you control (eg your

I live in India (so Rupees :-) I do have a broadband connection and
can access with no restrictions. But my concerns are slightly
different (asstated above).

> So, once we know why your outgoing traffic to CVS is blocked, we'll
> either order a new IP on which we can bind cvs-pserver on port 443, or

Oh, please do not think of incurring extra expenditures. I can always
use the under utilized borad band connection at home and transfer data
through a USB stick!

> We're also open to alternatives :)

Migrating to a SCM that works natively on port 80. A distributed SCM
would really be a welcome change. I can work offline. Once I want to
publish my changes, upload the changesets from my home. It eliminates
the need for continous access to a SCM server too (with my own local
repo).

Thanks once again.

with best regards,
dhruva

-- 
Dhruva Krishnamurthy
Contents reflect my personal views only!