CVS and redhat 5.2

[Ben Leibig]

I sort of feel stupid asking this question, but I am running redhat 5.2 and
I can't seem to find a way to checkout the current CVS tree.  When I do CVS
login I get an error and list of available options, and when I do a CVS
checkout I get:

No address associated with name
cvs [checkout aborted]: premature end of file from server

I have set my environment variable as instructed, but it's still not
working... Any ideas?