Server

General

emerge subversion
emerge --config dev-util/subversion

create a group for svn

groupadd -g 1010 svngrp

edit /etc/conf.d/svnserve and change the group

#SVNSERVE_USER="apache"
SVNSERVE_GROUP="svngrp"

Start the service and add it to default runlevel

/etc/init.d/svnserve start
rc-update add svnserve default

Setting up access rights

I currently create a new group for each repository and assign users to the group if they need read/write access.

cd /var/svn/
chmod -R 770 repos
chmod -R g+s repos/db
chgrp -R svngrp repos

(svngrp is the group name that I created in /etc/group to hold the svn users)

Edit /etc/groups and add the users to the group svngrp

Edit /var/svn/repos/conf/svnserve.conf (and set the following parameters)

anon-access = read
auth-access = write
password-db = passwd
realm = TTD_SVN

Edit /var/svn/repos/conf/passwd and add the users (see examples)

Setting up SSH access

Users that use the svn need to have ssh access set up correctly to the server. This has to be done by ssh-keys.

See ​http://linuxproblem.org/art_9.html

Client

Setting up an SSH-Tunnel

We do not use the standard port for ssh and svn does not support the common <user>@<host>:<port>/<path_to_repository> syntax. Therefor we have to set up a specific tunnel in run-time config file on the client!

Edit ~/.subversion/config (on the client) and at the end of the [tunnels section] make the following entry (port not shown for security reasons):

eussh = $EUSSH /usr/bin/ssh -p <port>

Test the connection

You can test the connection using the following command (this should not show any errors):

svn list svn+eussh://<user>@<host>/var/svn/repos/