Login into CVS tree.
```
cvs -d:pserver:anonymous@cvs.linux-mips.sourceforge.net:/cvsroot/linux-mips login
```
Press "Return" when prompted for password. You only need to do this once on any machine.

Check out a copy of the tree.

cvs -z3 -d:pserver:anonymous@cvs.linux-mips.sourceforge.net:/cvsroot/linux-mips co linux

To avoid name conflict, rename linux directory to sf-linux.
Take a look of sf-linux/Makefile and determine the kernel version. Let us say it is v2.4.16.
Goto http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/ to grab the right version of kernel source. Unzip and untar it in the same directory as linux-2.4.8.
```
cd linux-2.4.8
cp -af ../sf-linux/* .
```
You can now develop linux for MIPS machines under linux-2.4.8 directory. To start, find and use the default config under arch/mips/configs directory for your target board.