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Question: How do I setup a Subversion Server?

Subversion is a very popular project management piece of software. Kattare has copies of subversion installed by default on all of our webservers.

Since Kattare has not yet made the jump to Apache 2, we recommend granting access to your subversion repository via the subversion server, svnserve. If you have not yet setup your repository, we'll leave that to a Google search. "subversion setup" or "subversion howto" should result in many, many hits.

Specific to the Kattare servers though, we can assist with the svnserve setup:

1. change to your repository's configuration directory:

   cd <my_homedirectory>/<svn_root>/conf/

2. vi/pico passwd, it should look something like:

   <users>
   harry = harryspassword
   sally = sallyspassword

3. change permissions on the passwd file:

   chmod 600 passwd

4. vi/pico svnserve.conf, it should look something like:

   <general>
   anon-access = none
   auth-access = write
   password-db = passwd

5. Pick a port to run it on. If you have a private tomcat or apache instance, it's probably safe to snag the port it's running on and increment it by one or two. If not, just about anything in the 20000 - 21000 range should be good.
   
   Note: You will need to let support@kattare.com know the port you assigned so the webserver firewall can be opened up on that port.
   
   
6. run svnserve:

   svnserve -d --listen-port=<port> -r <my_homedirectory>/<svn_root>

7. Email support@kattare.com and ask them to setup the boot scripts to start your subversion instance at boot time. Please include the line you used above to start it up.
   

Keeping in mind that you'll have to specify the username and password as well, your subversion URL for checkout would then be something like:

svn://www.mydomain.com:<port>/repository/path

Additional Resources:
The O'Reilly Subversion Book
Basic Subversion setup and usage