The easiest way to use CVS with ssh is to use ssh-keygen to generate a public/private key without a passphrase (so ssh won't prompt you for a password). Upload the public key and put it in your ~/.ssh/authorized_keys directory on the ssh server. Try checking out your project now - you should be able to check it out without having to type in a password. Make sure the environment variable CVS_RSH is set to ssh so you are using ssh as the transport. Put the following line in your .emacs file and you should be able to check stuff in and do version control using emacs and VC:

(setenv "CVS_RSH" "ssh")