The "error \n" string being written to stdout is being sent to the
client of the pserver. Probably from one of print_pending_error(),
do_cvs_command(), or serve_expand_modules(). In all cases, it should
have previously sent some kind of an error to the client.
The output message would have been this one:
write(1, "E cvs update: Updating softwar/g"..., 60) = 60
The protocol message would have been this one:
write(1, "Clear-sticky softwar/gui/myframe"..., 106) = 106
It would be more useful if you would use 'cvs -vvv' on your cvs client
to get debugging information out of the client.