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How to configure SVN web access for different write permissions?

Answer 1

+2 A:

SVNPath is for one repository, SVNParentPath is for a root directory containing several repositories. So you should remove your second location in the Apache configuration file because it conflicts with the first if you try to access http://<host>/svn/foobar.

You should put absolute paths for the access and authentication files, make sure the Apache service has read/write access to the parent directory and all the repositories, and read access to those access and authentication files, it is often overlooked in manual installations.

For example:

<Location /svn>
    RedirectMatch ^(/svn)$ $1/
    SVNParentPath E:\SVN

    DAV svn
    SVNListParentPath on
    AuthType Basic
    AuthName "Subversion repositories"
    Require valid-user

    AuthUserFile C:\SVN\conf\svn-auth.txt
    AuthzSVNAccessFile C:\SVN\conf\svn-acl.txt
</Location>

You will find all the necessary information in Version Control with Subversion (this is the link to the latest version, though the Apache configuration settings haven't changed lately).

Then you should be able to specify global or individual permissions for groups and users, for your repositories. Examples of that can be found here, with the name you gave:

[groups]
full = abatishchev, anotherguy
main = abatishchev

[/]
* = r
@full = rw
abatishchev = rw

[foobar:/]
* =
@main = rw
full = r

[otherproject:/]
@main = rw
full = r

In this example, you have set general rules in [/], then particular rules that will prevail for foorbar (and everything below), and otherproject. You can even specify specific rules for individual directories of a repository.

RedGlyph 2009-12-22 19:43:05

Thanks! I have my secondary apache config entry because e:\svn could contains e:\svn\foo (repo) and e:\svn\bar (directory with number of repos). So every repos root directory requires own Location entry

abatishchev 2009-12-22 21:16:42

You can use regular expressions in the Apache `Location` directive to exclude secondary roots, maybe that could help to separate both and avoid the conflict. If you need several subdirectories that could get awkward after a while: an `svnserve` SVN server allows for arbitrary repository structures which would make your configuration much simpler (you can have subdirectories, no need to specify them). It is also less heavy and reduces the network bandwidth.

RedGlyph 2009-12-22 23:46:05

Your idea sounds very cool but unfortunately, this didn't helped. A repo under the root works (e:\svn\some-proj) but repo under a sub-root - not: "Could not open the requested SVN filesystem" (e:\svn\some-dir\some-proj). Is there any other Apache conf trick to implement the task as you described?

abatishchev 2009-12-23 20:17:54

I'm afraid each `<Location>` will be restricted to one root associated with the `SVNParentPath` if you are using an Apache server, I tried to get some hierarchy a while ago but didn't succeed unless using several locations (I'm no Apache guru though). That's why I switched to svnserve. My previous comment was about 2 locations, the first at the root and the second below, with the first one excluding the second in a regular expression, like `<Location /svn(?!/some-dir)>`, the second one being `<Location /svn/some-dir>`. Maybe Apache handles that automatically though, you'll have to check.

RedGlyph 2009-12-24 08:30:36

Answer 2

A:

Changing Apache config

<Location /svn>

to

<Location /svn/>

fixes the problem of 403 error on directory listing

abatishchev 2009-12-23 10:04:11

By reading your other PR on ServerFault I realized where your error message was coming from, too bad you didn't put that here as well. You can simply use the `RedirectMatch ^(/svn)$ $1/` directive to avoid this problem it will automatically append a trailing slash after `http://<host>/svn` (see my modified example).

RedGlyph 2009-12-23 17:44:36

Answer 3

+1 A:

This is not a direct answer to your question, and it is always great to learn stuff from the ground up as you are doing it now, but seeing as you're on a Windows machine I thought I'd mention VisualSVN server. It's a point-and-click, very nice to configure wrapper to the SVN binaries that provides a web access of its own as well.

Pekka 2009-12-23 17:42:42

Thanks! I tried it. Unfortunately it supports only one root for repositories. All folders under the root must already be a repositories. But I have a number sub-dirs (categories) and only there repositories and located

abatishchev 2009-12-23 20:30:32

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How to configure SVN web access for different write permissions?

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