This example involves user fred again, except this time this work is done on fred's machine, fred.company.org. The source repository is located on src.sister-company.com. (This is the machine where the server was setup.)
CVSROOT=fred@src.sister-company.com:/usr/src/CVS CVS_RSH=ssh export CVSROOT CVS_RSH
The first line instructs cvs on where to find the source, and the user ID to use when logging in/issuing commands to that machine. In this case, the user ID will be fred, the source is located on the computer src.sister-company.com in the directory /usr/src/CVS.
The second line says to use ssh as the mechanism to access the remote machine. This is essential if you are using this over an insecure network such as the internet! The third line just makes the above two environment variables accessible to any programs started up.