svn updates with different account (--username and --password ignored?)

Question

Here is the situation: One man checked out repository and now I have to update some of the folders. Problem is that he left and no one knows the password. So, I would like to use my own account. I execute this command:

svn up --username (my_user_name) --password (my_password) --no-auth-cache

SVN asks for my password and SVN doesn't accept it. It looks like my credentials are ignored and original credentials are used (the one who did check out). I tested my account doing check out in /tmp and worked fine.

Why SVN does not accept my credentials while doing update?

Answer 1

Try this

  mv $HOME/.subversion $HOME/.subversion-old
  cd <your working copy> 
  svn up --username <your username>

This should ask for the password for your username

Answer 2

I have never tried this, but it looks like SVN stores the user ID internally once you check out something. I am not sure you can override this when checking in.

Why don't you just change the ex-employee's password on the server (he doesn't need his password anymore ;-)). Then do the checkin under his name, with the changed password. This is arguably cleaner anyway, because then the checkin will appear under his names, and the changes were done by him.

Answer 3

Get the required permissions and become owner of the workspace by changing user and group settings:

chown -R user:group path/to/workspace/root/ 

Try again accessing the workspace with your credentials.