Environment Variables
Since you don't want to type the -d command every time you run CVS, you set up an environment variable called CVSROOT to tell CVS where to go.
For example:
Hale$ CVSROOT=:pserver:hale@192.168.1.7:usr/loca/cvsrepos
Hale$ export CVSROOT
Hale$ echo $CVSROOT
You should see
Hale$ :pserver:hale@192.168.1.7:usr/local/cvsrepos
For bash shell users, edit .bashrc in your home directory and add the first two lines above (CVSROOT=... and export CVSROOT).
Other shells, Unix and Windows are discussed in the CVS manual.
NOTE: For windows users - the CVSROOT environment variable is CVSROOT, not $CVSROOT.