Creating local doc repository

[Steve Bertrand]

As I'm very interested in learning 'howto' contribute to the documentation
project, I'm working through the documentation primer.

I'm have some confusion on the best method to check out (or copy the
sources locally) of the entire doc tree.

Can I just check them out from the FreeBSD servers directly, if so, is
there documentation I could be pointed to that will get me started with
the correct server name, repository name etc? or;

Can I just mirror the doc tree locally? I've tried this with cvsup to no
avail. From the info I've gathered, I've concaucted the following supfile:

#*default tag=RELENG_4
*default host=cvsup-master.FreeBSD.org
*default release=cvs
*default base=/usr/local/etc/cvsup
*default prefix=/home/steve/doc
*default delete use-rel-suffix
*default umask=002
cvsroot-doc

...with the following result (after successfully connecting to the server):

Authentication required, but could not open "/home/steve/.cvsup/auth"

Any information on how I can get a copy of the source so I can begin the
process of attempting my own contribs would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks for any leads to howto's, advice etc.

Steve