Access methods

The Sarovar system only accepts key-based SSH2 authentication. That means you'll have to upload your public keys to sarovar.org prior to using any of the authenticated developer services.

If you haven't done so already, generate your private/public key pair by running ssh-keygen.
To learn more about the public key cryptography, visit the OpenSSH website.

Then, use your web browser to visit the main page and log in to the Sarovar system. Follow navigation links to reach [My Page] -> [Account Maintenance] -> [Shell Account Information] -> [Edit Keys] section.

If you encounter any problems finding that page, use the following screenshots for reference:

Location of the page:

Key upload link:

Once you click [Edit Keys], you'll be taken to a page containing a short description and a text area. Go to the ~/.ssh/ directory on your system and identify your public key file (id_*.pub usually), then copy the file contents into the provided area.
Again, you're looking for id_dsa.pub or id_rsa.pub, not the identity.pub file which is a SSH1 public key and as such will have no effect if uploaded to Sarovar.
Keep in mind that each line should contain exactly one key, so line breaks are not allowed, unless they separate different keys. Just don't let the automatic wrapping in the text area confuse you; the system knows it's not a newline.

After you paste your key(s) and click Update, make sure the number of keys reported matches the number you expected. If it doesn't, you probably made a mistake during the copy/paste process.

As it takes some time before the keys from the database are propagated to the corresponding directories on the Sarovar server, you might not be able to log in immediately. Please tolerate the time needed for the upload to take effect.

Using CVS

Concurrent Versions System, or just CVS, is a version control system. It is used to keep history records of your source files (or anything else you keep in the CVS repository). CVS seems to be a dominant version control system among the Open Source/Free Software development groups.
CVS supports internet-based, distributed development. For example, the SMC project volunteers all live in different countries, and to share the codebase they need a globally available repository; they use CVS.

You can use the web-based CVSWEB module to view project files on Sarovar, but for any serious work you'll want to use the proper CVS access methods.
For details on client-side CVS , see our UNIX or Windows setup pages.

The SSH keys you uploaded will be used for authentication, and no manual password entry will ever be needed.

To learn more about the CVS, see the CVS homepage and the authoritative CVS Book.
To find out more about a better alternative to CVS, see the GNU Subversion website and the authoritative SVN Book. Note that GNU Subversion is not available on Sarovar, but can be interesting for your projects where CVS is simply not up to the task.

Using rsync

Using rsync, you will be maintaining your public web pages at Sarovar (the http://PN.sarovar.org contents). The root directory for your project website will be located in the /var/lib/gforge/chroot/home/groups/PN/htdocs/ directory at Sarovar. .

Generally, you will have to keep the files maintained on your end (somewhere in your local directory tree), and then use rsync to "synchronize" the content with the Sarovar account.

After you create the files locally and make sure you cd to the base directory, you can rsync using the following command:

Where the UN and PN are your respective user and project names. (Note that the UN@ part can be omitted if your local user name matches the one at Sarovar).

Rsync, by default, does not remove files on the remote end when they are deleted from the local repository. To make the two repositories truly identical, you'll have to add --delete argument to rsync.
If your files are under some kind of a revision control (CVS, for example), you'll want to use the --cvs-exclude option to ignore the control files and directories during the sync.
Also, with rsync, the trailing slash in directory name is significant so don't omit it while retyping.

The SSH keys you uploaded will be used for authentication, and no manual password entry will ever be needed.

To learn more, see the rsync homepage.

Shell access

At present, it's not possible to obtain shell access on Sarovar. We appologize for any inconvenience.