When I try running a CVS update against any of my checkouts, I get
complaints like the following:

cbbrowne at dba2:~/Slony-I/slony1-1_1_STABLE> cvs update -Pd
? Emptydir
? Win32/test_I_droptab.in
? Win32/out
cannot create_adm_p /tmp/cvs-serv8374/Win32
Permission denied

The main diagnostic that I have been able to find is the following:

<http://lists.nongnu.org/archive/html/bug-cvs/2002-09/msg00006.html>

The most common source of that error is a missing CVSROOT/Emptydir
directory and lack of permission to create it.  The simplest fix is to
run "cvs init" as a user who has write permission in $CVSROOT/CVSROOT.
(It's safe to run init on an existing repository -- it preserves all the
existing stuff and just creates anything that's missing.)

-Larry Jones

http://ch.tudelft.nl/~arthur/cvsd/faq.html

*When I try cvs update I get: "cannot create_adm_p /tmp/cvs-serv5153/...
Permission denied*

This has to do with some changes that were made in cvs. You have to
create an Emptydir directory in every CVSROOT directory. The cvsd user
does not need to have write access to this directory.

It also seems plausible that /tmp has filled up on gBorg...