install and configure subversion

Step 1: Install subversion

[root@server ~]# yum -y install subversion

Step 2: Create a username under which the subversion daemon will run and set a password for it

sudo yum install subversion

sudo /usr/sbin/useradd svn
sudo passwd svn

su – svn

cd ~
mkdir repositories

cd repositories
svnadmin create myproject

ll myproject
-rw-rw-r– 1 svn svn 229 Nov 21 16:58 README.txt
drwxrwxr-x 2 svn svn 1024 Nov 21 16:58 conf
drwxrwsr-x 6 svn svn 1024 Nov 21 16:58 db
-r–r–r– 1 svn svn 2 Nov 21 16:58 format
drwxrwxr-x 2 svn svn 1024 Nov 21 16:58 hooks
drwxrwxr-x 2 svn svn 1024 Nov 21 16:58 locks

You need to edit “myproject/conf/svnserve.conf” and uncomment the following lines:

auth-access = write
password-db = passwd

and edit the password file “myproject/conf/passwd” adding a new user and password. Note that the password is stored in plain text. In the following example we have a user called “john” whose password is “foobar123”:

[users]
john = foobar123

And finally, as the svn user, start the subversion daemon like so:

svnserve -d -r /home/svn/repositories

Connect to svn://svn@hostname/myproject

[root@server ~]# /usr/sbin/useradd -m -d /home/svn svn
[root@server ~]# passwd svn

Step 3: Login as the newly created username

[root@server ~]# su - svn
[svn@server ~]$

Step 4: Create a directory named repositories (where you will create all the subversion projects) and access it

[svn@server ~]$ mkdir repositories
[svn@server ~]$ cd repositories

Step 5: Create a project and list the contents of the newly created project (I chose to name mine “coolproject”)

[svn@server repositories]$ svnadmin create coolproject
[svn@server repositories]$ ls -lh coolproject/
 total 32K
 drwxrwxr-x 2 svn svn 4.0K Feb 27 17:42 conf
 drwxrwsr-x 6 svn svn 4.0K Feb 27 17:42 db
 -r--r--r-- 1 svn svn    2 Feb 27 17:42 format
 drwxrwxr-x 2 svn svn 4.0K Feb 27 17:42 hooks
 drwxrwxr-x 2 svn svn 4.0K Feb 27 17:42 locks
 -rw-rw-r-- 1 svn svn  229 Feb 27 17:42 README.txt

Step 6: Now it’s needed to enable write access and let subversion know which file is used to store credentials, for this we need to edit coolproject/conf/svnserve.conf and uncomment the following options:

auth-access = write
password-db = passwd

[svn@server repositories]$ sed -i 's/# auth-access = write/auth-access = write/' coolproject/conf/svnserve.conf
[svn@server repositories]$ sed -i 's/# password-db = passwd/password-db = passwd/' coolproject/conf/svnserve.conf

Step 7: Add the desired username and password to coolproject/conf/passwd file (make sure you replace yourusername and somepassword with the desired username and password)

[svn@server repositories]$ echo "yourusername = somepassword" >> coolproject/conf/passwd

Step 8: You can now start the subversion server using the following command

[svn@server repositories]$ svnserve -d -r /home/svn/repositories

Step 9: If for any reason you want to stop the subversion server (for example you want to create a new project and you need to restart it) use the following command to do so

[svn@server repositories]$ killall -9 svnserver

Congratulations! You have successfully installed and configured subversion on a RHEL/CentOS system, you may now connect to svn://svn@se.rv.er.ip/coolproject and begin working on your project!