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I am relatively new to revision control and I need some help deciding if this is the proper set up.

I am using "Subversion for Windows" from Sourceforge, TortoiseSVN and DynDNS. We have a "server machine" we're using to install all of this on. We want to be able to share the repository over the network and access it from home. We do not have a web server available to use.

The folder structure is like this:

C:\SVN\project-name\trunk
C:\SVN\project-name\branches and so on...

On the test run on my local machine I was able to install everything and successfully import and download copies of our repository using an address like such:

svn://my-dyndns-addr/SVN-folder/project-name/trunk

For the sake of expediting the process I didn't run the svnserve.exe file as a service and simply used this command:

svnserve.exe --daemon

This worked fine. The DynDNS connection seems to work as well and I can ping it from any of our work machines. The configuration files in the "conf" directory have all been modified appropriately with a new username and password.

Then it was time to repeat this process on the server and I installed and configured everything similarly. The only change I made was installing svnserve.exe as a service following this guide. The service installed fine and I can connect to the repository, but the authentication is failing. Again I am still able to ping the DynDNS address and the SVN address.

So my questions are: is there some part of the authentication process I'm missing? How come with such similar setups I can connect to the SVN server on my machine but not on the server? And is this a good setup? Should I be concerned about security beyond having good usernames and passwords? Are there any little things I might be overlooking? This is all new to me so I've mostly been "tinkering" around.

Thanks.

A couple last notes: I am remoting into the server and I've restarted the service and computer a couple times now.

Sam
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3 Answers3

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It sounds like the service doesn't have access to the password file.

Services usually run as a special user, such as Network Service. As such, it may not have access to your subversion root directory.

You can fix that by making your service run as a regular user, or by granting Network Service access to your root directory.

Seth
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Don't waste your time with SVN server setup.

Visual SVN

Collabonet Subversion Edge

These are free! Provided with the web server and https security.

9dan
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I hate to answer my own question, but for those that might experience similar problems, here is what happened:

First off, taking 9dan's advice I switched my subversion package to Collab's. Easier install and the services installed automatically. Thanks.

Next I don't believe there was an issue with the service accessing the folders. In fact I'm almost positive there wasn't after some various testing I did. What the problem ended up being was my choice of username in the conf/passwd file. I had for the sake of simplicity, used my student network account name. In a last ditch effort I changed it, restarted the server and it worked! It still seems a little hokey and will require some more care before I feel comfortable leaving it, but at least it's working!

On a final note, and this may only affect a few people, but one of the services installed by Collab is Apache. I had XAMPP services running and they conflicted. Be sure to check your services to see which is running. In my case, I don't need Apache for subversion so I disabled it.

Thanks for the replies! Hope this helps some people.

Sam
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