If you wish to preserve /etc with CVS, do the following (rather than importing)

0) Make sure that you have a repository at CVSROOT (as you have done) and do
	cd $CVSROOT
	mkdir <your_hostname_here>	# <-- put your hostname there

1) Create a top level CVS admin directory:
	cd /
	mkdir CVS
	touch CVS/Entries
	echo <your_hostname_here> > CVS/Repository
	echo $CVSROOT > CVS/Root
1.1) Verify that everything is copacetic by doing
	cd /
	cvs -n updat -l
and you should see a lot of '? bin' etc messages

2) Add /etc to the repository
	cd /
	cvs add etc
You should see /etc/CVS/* populated, and etc mentioned in /CVS/Entries*

3) Choose the files you want to track, and populate. For example, if you
wanted to track inetd.conf, you would do
	cd /etc
	cvs add inetd.conf
	cvs ci inetd.conf

3.1 Verify by doing
	cd /etc
	cvs diff inetd.conf		# <-- try changing a byte
and/or doing
	cd /var/tmp
	cvs get <your hostname here>
	cd <your hostname here>/etc
	cvs diff inetd.conf

4) Get rid of output from files the you don't wish to track. For example, if you
don't want to track /etc/foo, you would do
	cd /etc
	echo foo > .cvsignore
	cvs add .cvsignore
	cvs ci .cvsignore
Iterate with all files that you do not wish to track.

5) CHECK THE PERMISSIONS! When doing cvs checkouts, its *REAL* easy to end
up accidently changing permissions on a critical file. I usually "fix" this
by writing a short shell script (called .cvsfix) that sets the permissions,
something like
	#!/bin/sh
	chmod 644 inetd.conf
	chown root.root inetd.conf
added to the repository as
	cd /etc
	<create .cvsfix with contents above>
	cvs add .cvsfix
	chmod +x .cvsfix
	cvs ci .cvsfix
You can test the script by doing
	cd /etc
	./.cvsfix
You probably should diddle the script to be independent of the "cd /etc" and
you should *not* use absolute paths in the script because you might be
working with a checkout in a different directory.

6) Symlinks are a pain. You have three choices
  a) (dumb and dirty) check in the contents of each symlink (thereby making
   it a separate file).
  b) (ok but a little hard to manage) recreate symlinks as in 5) by adding
   lines to .cvsfix
  c) (hard but possibly elegant) figure out how to have cvs check in symlinks
    asd symlinks (this is possible but I've never done it).

As for the error "cannot commit files as root", you have two choices:
  a) (easy) Rebuild from the src.rpm and enable the ability to check in as root.
  b) (hard) Design a security scheme using membership in system groups that
      permits you to do "chmod g+w /etc". If you don't understand the
      ramifications of adding group write permissions to /etc, go *DIRECTLY*
      to a)

Hope this helps.