This document shows how to setup a subversion server on a Debian based system.

Required packages: subversion apache2 libapache2-svn
Required: Apache with SSL

Ubuntu Howto

mkdir /home/svn
svnadmin create /home/svn/first_repo
svnadmin create /home/svn/second_repo

/etc/apache2/mods-available/dav_svn.conf

<Location /svn>
  DAV svn
  SVNParentPath /home/svn
  SVNListParentPath On
  AuthType Basic
  AuthName "Subversion Repositories"
  AuthUserFile /etc/subversion/passwd
  <LimitExcept GET PROPFIND OPTIONS REPORT>
    Require valid-user
  </LimitExcept>
</Location>

Disable anonymous access by removing the two LimitExcept lines

mkdir /home/svn
svnadmin create /home/svn/the_repository

/etc/apache2/mods-available/dav_svn.conf

<Location /svn>
  DAV svn
  SVNPath /home/svn/the_repository
  AuthType Basic
  AuthName "Subversion Repository"
  AuthUserFile /etc/subversion/passwd
  <LimitExcept GET PROPFIND OPTIONS REPORT>
    Require valid-user
  </LimitExcept>
</Location>

Disable anonymous access by removing the two LimitExcept lines

addgroup subversion
adduser www-data subversion
chown -R www-data:subversion /home/svn
chmod -R g+rws /home/svn

Svnbook
mod_authz_svn can slow down everything!

/etc/subversion/dav_svn.authz

# give everybody read access
[/]
* = r

# give harry full read and write access to this repository, but sally only read access
[first_repo:/]
harry = rw
sally = r

# give sally write access only to the 'testing' subdir
[first_repo:/testing]
sally = rw

/etc/apache2/mods-available/dav_svn.conf

AuthzSVNAccessFile /etc/subversion/dav_svn.authz

Homepage

HTTPS recommended!

includes/config.php:

$config->parentPath('/home/svn');

$config->addRepository('repository', 'file:///home/svn/the_repository'); 

Creating a backup of an entire repository while preserving the version history is not a complicated task. There are two different ways: either directly with svnadmin or with the rsvndump tool. The first one can only be done by someone who can access the server via SSH, whereas rsvndump can be used by anybody.

svnadmin dump /path/to/repository > repo.svn_dump

rsvndump

rsvndump https://the.url.com/svn/repository > repo.svn_dump

svnadmin create /path/to/repository
svnadmin load /path/to/repository < repo.svn_dump

Don't forget to set permissions!