SVN Error: Expected fs format between '1' and '3'; found format '4'

Question

Here's what I did, I have installed svnserve as a service and I started it with the net start svn service command. I typed svn ls svn://localhost to test the service but it returned the error as stated in the title of this post.

I entered svn --version and svnserve --version on my computer to find out the version numbers and the client and the server version is the same, version 1.5.6. I'm guessing the error appears due to different versions of the server and the client.

When I start the server using svnserve --daemon --root command in cmd, The error still appears.

Why does the error appear? Thanks

Answer 1

Which Subverson tool did you use to create the repository? TortoiseSVN? Your TortoiseSVN may be newer, a 1.6.x release, then your 1.5 command line client and svnserve, so svnserve 1.5.x cannot serve a 1.6.x repository.

In my fsfs repository created with svnadmin 1.6.1, the db/format file contains

$ cat repos/db/format 
4
layout sharded 1000

Answer 2

I installed (the Collabnet install of) SVN 1.5.5 and it was running fine with TortoiseSVN 1.6.1. After upgrading SVN to 1.6.2 I'm getting the same error (Expected fs format between ‘1’ and ‘3’; found format ‘4’) when I try to access it through Trac. This lends credibility to Blair's answer. I'll let you know how I get it running again.

Update: Blair's answer worked for me, too: the message says that an old version of SVN is trying to access the repository, so find it and delete it. The specifics for me were that the error only occurred when I used Trac, so I re-installed Trac on Windows (http://trac.edgewall.org/wiki/TracOnWindows) with the latest installer I could find (svn-python-1.6.1.win32-py2.5.exe) and deleted old eggs from the Python site-packages folder. After a reboot and resync, I was up and running again.

Answer 3

I had the same issue so I followed Lachlan's post and now working perfectly - THANK you!

Answer 4

I delete my old repository and create a new one using command line -> svnadmin create C:\SvnRepository

*old repository was created by right clicking on the folder and click "Create Repository here"

Answer 5

Make sure you are using the correct svnadmin. For example, if you installed VisualSVN, you will need to use the svnadmin located in the bin folder of the installation directory. I had installed the command line version of SVN...and when I used this version of the svnadmin tool, I got the same error.

Answer 6

Thanks, Joe. I had both CollabNet SVN server and VisualSVN installed and was getting errors until I made sure I was using the version of svnadmin that came with VisualSVN (which I had used to create the repositories).