pserver dies on startup with "cvs [pserver aborted]: bad auth protocol start:"

[FredO]

I am trying to start pserver on a Mandriva Linux system. When I
execute the command "/usr/bin/cvs pserver -c /etc/cvs/cvs.conf",
pserver dies immediately with the message: "cvs [pserver aborted]: bad
auth protocol start: ".   /etc/xinetd.d/cvs contains:

service cvspserver
{
        socket_type = stream
        protocol = tcp
        wait = no
        server = /usr/sbin/cvspserver
        disable = no
        user = cvs
}

/etc/cvs/cvs.conf contains:

# -*- shell-script -*-
#
# Configuration file for the Mandrake CVS-related scripts
#

# Locations of CVS repositories you want to export via pserver
CVS_REPOS="/opt/cvsroot"


# cvs.conf ends here


Any ideas as to why pserver is dying on startup