IT Tips and Tricks

These instructions show how to install the SVN system and the WebSVN via Apache SSL connection.
These instructions don’t explain much, I hope your are Linux/Apache savvy enough to understand them.

Install the needed Debian packages
apt-get install subversion libapache2-svn openssl ssl-cert
a2enmod ssl
a2enmod dav_svn
Everything in the dav_svn.conf configuration file is already disabled.
You can refer to it for more instructions on how to configure the module.

Create subversion repositories:
mkdir -p /var/svn
chown -R www-data:www-data /var/svn
All our subversion repositories should be located in /var/svn in order to be visible to Apache.
You can change /var/svn to any directory but you must configure WebSVN later accordingly.

Apache DAV_SVN and WebSVN Configuration
Lets move the default SSL configuration symlink out of the way
rm /etc/apache2/sites-enabled/default-ssl &>/dev/null

Create own SVN access configuration under an SSL VirtualHost as follows:
touch /etc/apache2/sites-available/ssl.conf
ln -s /etc/apache2/sites-available/ssl.conf /etc/apache2/sites-enabled/001-ssl.conf

Edit the file /etc/apache2/sites-available/ssl.conf and add this content.

<VirtualHost *:443>
     DocumentRoot /var/www
     # Authentication for all acesses here
     <Location />
          AuthType Basic
          AuthName "Subversion Repository"
          AuthUserFile /etc/apache2/dav_svn.passwd
          Require valid-user
     </Location>
     # ------------------ SVN ---------------------------------
     <Location /svn>
          DAV svn
          SVNParentPath /var/svn
          # this line must be added if you want SSL enabled
          SSLRequireSSL
     </Location>
     # ------------------WebSVN Client interface --------------
     <Directory /var/www/websvn>
          Options -Indexes +FollowSymlinks
          DirectoryIndex index.php
     </Directory>
     # ----------------- Some Extra SSL configuration needed ---------------
     <FilesMatch "\.(cgi|shtml|phtml|php)$">
          SSLOptions +StdEnvVars
     </FilesMatch>
     <Directory /usr/lib/cgi-bin>
          SSLOptions +StdEnvVars
     </Directory>
     # Solving the IE problems
     BrowserMatch ".*MSIE.*" \
          nokeepalive ssl-unclean-shutdown \
          downgrade-1.0 force-response-1.0
     SSLEngine on
     #Using Debian self-signed certificate
     SSLCertificateFile /etc/ssl/certs/ssl-cert-snakeoil.pem
     SSLCertificateKeyFile /etc/ssl/private/ssl-cert-snakeoil.key....
</VirtualHost>

Create authentication users
Create the authentication file(-c) and the first user (user1)
htpasswd -c /etc/apache2/dav_svn.passwd user1
Create the second user (user2)
htpasswd /etc/apache2/dav_svn.passwd user2

Restart Apache2
/etc/init.d/apache2 restart

Subversion Testing
svnadmin create /var/svn/test
chown -R www-data:www-data /var/svn/test
svn co https://new.site/svn/test
It should says “Checked out revision 0.”, otherwise try looking for the errors on the Internet.
You probably forgot some steps or I forgot to mention some details.

WebSVN client Installation

Get the package from the source in Internet
mkdir -p /var/www/
cd /var/www
wget http://websvn.tigris.org/files/documents/1380/49056/websvn-2.3.3.tar.gz
tar fvxz websvn-2.3.3.tar.gz
ln -s websvn-2.3.3 websvn
cp websvn/include/distconfig.php websvn/include/config.php
Edit /var/www/websvn/include/config.php.
Add the following line:
$config->parentPath('/var/svn');
You can set many other options but many of the default settings are enough for now.
Try webSVN interface:
https://server.name/websvn
After authenticating you should see the repository TEST (Top left of the browser)
This the TEST repository we created previously during the ‘svn testing’