Tortoise SVN checkout not working in Windows 8

Question

Hey I just bought a new laptop, it has Windows 8, and the desktop I have is on 7. The previous laptop which died was also on 7. I downloaded the latest version Tortoise SVN (1.8.1) on both the the new laptop and 7 desktop, to checkout a repository and it works completely fine in 7, and will not even connect on the 8 machine. I can't find any known issues that seem to relate to this.

Any help would be appreciated!

What is the error message? Have you tried to checkout from commandline without TortoiseSVN on your Windows 8 to make sure? — László Papp, Aug 24 '13 at 06:25
error message from Tortoise is: "Unable to connect to a repository at URL" and then when I tried to use SilkSVN, the error I get is: "Can't create tunnel" — Benjamin Santiago, Aug 24 '13 at 07:01
also note it is an svn+ssh connection. I was able to ssh into the server from this machine, as well as from a mac earlier today at work. — Benjamin Santiago, Aug 24 '13 at 07:03
I have tried both methods here: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/12606950/tortisesvn-svnssh-error-unable-to-connect-to-a-repository-at-url-network-c to no avail. When I tried to comment out the bashrc file I do not see the mesg line mentioned. — Benjamin Santiago, Aug 24 '13 at 08:24
FWIW, I'm willing to bet that Windows 8's Firewall and/or UAC is the culprit. — Sameer Singh, Aug 27 '13 at 13:43
Yeah I disabled Windows Firewall as well. It was a refurbished Dell that came with some trial of McAfee, which I uninstalled (apparently you have to disable a separate program to FULLY uninstall it which seems insane to me) and disabled the firewall and nothing. I will probably try the UAC thing you mentioned just out of curiousity. Thanks Sameer! — Benjamin Santiago, Aug 29 '13 at 18:06
@BrunoLowagie, try to set username and password arguments on TortoisePlink.exe. — Karina, Sep 30 '13 at 14:05

score 7 · Answer 1 · answered Sep 30 '13 at 14:02

I experienced same problem on windows 8 machines twice (using tortoise with putty). I needed to explicitly specify user and password argument on TortoisePlink.exe.

You can add the arguments on TortoiseSVN Settings->Network->SSH->SSH Client. The value would look like: "C:\Program Files\TortoiseSVN\bin\TortoisePlink.exe" -v -l username -pw password

The problem seems to be on authentication part. Tortoise client can't retrieve credentials from saved sessions on putty.

Hope this helps.

score 4 · Accepted Answer · answered Aug 31 '13 at 15:17

I have found a solution, although it may not be the solution.

I've installed Cygwin on my Windows 8 machine, and during the installation process, I checked all tools related to ssh. You can check if you installed it correctly if you find ssh.exe in your Cygwin directory. For instance: C:\cygwin\bin\ssh.exe.

Now go right-click "TortoiseSVN" in explorer and pick "Settings". Select "Network" and at the bottom, you'll discover that you can change the SSH client. Use C:\cygwin\bin\ssh.exe.

Now the Cygwin ssh client will be used instead of TortoisePlink. I don't know why this client works and plink doesn't, but it saved my day.

Extra remark: I used to use Pageant so that I wouldn't have to type in my password on my own machine, but you can also follow these three steps to achieve the same result.

score 0 · Answer 3 · answered Aug 25 '13 at 20:17

Hey I just ended up using my other computer (the windows 7 desktop), only needed the SVN for a couple more days, just have never encountered this issue before. I was able to pull down another repository so I am not going to wast a ton more time on this issue.

score 0 · Answer 4 · edited Dec 27 '13 at 00:12

0

I had a similar problem with Tortoise 64 bit under Windows 8.1, in that all the context menus disappeared. They were still present from within various Open... dialog boxes.

I changed the %PATH% variable to have tortoise's path right at the front and the ctx' menues came back.

edited Dec 27 '13 at 00:12

answered Dec 26 '13 at 23:51

Probably

1

score 0 · Answer 5 · answered Oct 13 '16 at 11:12

My co-worker had this problem. @Kaz 's answer helped me find the solution.

The problem seems to be on authentication part. Tortoise client can't retrieve credentials from saved sessions on putty.

My co-worker's problem was that his PUTTY's default settings in the saved sessions were set to use TELNET instead of SSH. So once we saved the default settings to use SSH instead, it worked.

Tortoise SVN checkout not working in Windows 8

5 Answers5