Where does SVN client store user authentication data?

Question

I am trying to simulate a problem we have with a particular domain ID which has issues accessing a subversion repository. Towards this, I tried a svn checkout with the option --username *domain\problematic_ID* on another windows machine. But I am not able to reproduce the problem as the checkout still succeeds using my own ID. This led me to wonder if svn caches user authentication data in more than one place and if so where.

I have cleared the auth directory in the application data area, changed the options in teh config file to disable caching of user auth data - but to no avail. The system does not even prompt me for the new user name and password, but simply checks out with the old ID.(I know it is the old ID in use by looking through the SVN logs). I am obviously missing something here -- but what? :-(

Does anyone know?

Thanks in advance!

EDIT: The subversion client version I use is 1.4.6(r28521)

Answer 1

It sounds like you are doing everything exactly as the client credential section of the Subversion book suggests. The only thing I can think of is that the server isn't asking for the username and password because is getting it from somewhere else.

Answer 2

On Unix, it's in $HOME/.subversion/auth. On Windows, I think it's: %APPDATA%\Subversion\auth.

Answer 3

Which version do you use?

Here is the documentation on credential caching, for the latest (1.6 as of writing).

On Windows, the Subversion client stores passwords in the %APPDATA%/Subversion/auth/ directory. On Windows 2000 and later, the standard Windows cryptography services are used to encrypt the password on disk. Because the encryption key is managed by Windows and is tied to the user's own login credentials, only the user can decrypt the cached password. (Note that if the user's Windows account password is reset by an administrator, all of the cached passwords become undecipherable. The Subversion client will behave as though they don't exist, prompting for passwords when required.)

Also, be aware that a few changes occurred in version 1.6 regarding password storage.