Savannah didn't seem to be broken, insofar that webcvs was fine. I tried gcc.gnu.org as well and that also failed. In the end I tried to pull it manually (despite not having the slightest clue where to move it to after I'd got it. That worked. I then tried bitbake again and it also started to pull down gcc.
The question is was this pure coincidence that savannah came back just when I tried the manual pull or (more likely) is the fact that I exported CVS_RSH=ssh and set my CVSROOT manually prior to the last attempt anything to do with this? I thought bitbake controlled all the environmental settings but this would suggest I am wrong.
I've moved on to the next problem now (still in gcc) it is failing to build libiberty due to an undefined function __builtin_expect which is supposedly a gcc builtin for branch prediction hinting.
Ho hum, I'll get there in the end.
Neil