source: general/prog/svnserver.xml@ 8cf08a11

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  <!ENTITY % general-entities SYSTEM "../../general.ent">
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<sect1 id="svnserver" xreflabel="Running a Subversion Server">
  <?dbhtml filename="svnserver.html"?>

  <sect1info>
  <othername>$LastChangedBy$</othername>
  <date>$Date$</date>
  </sect1info>

  <title>Running a Subversion Server</title>

  <sect2 role="package">
    <title>Running a Subversion Server</title>

    <para>This section will describe how to set up, administer and secure
    a <application>Subversion</application> server.</para>

    <!-- <note>
      <para>The default build instructions for
      <application>Subversion</application> disabled the
      <application>Berkeley DB</application> repository back-end due to the
      errors encountered in the test suite while building the
      <xref linkend="subversion"/> package. This should not present a
      functionality issue as the FSFS repository back-end is now the default,
      and recommended by the <application>Subversion</application> development
      team.</para>

      <para>If you have existing repositories based on a
      <application>Berkeley DB</application> back-end and you followed the
      BLFS instructions for building <application>Subversion</application>,
      you'll need to dump the databases, create new repositories using the
      FSFS back-end, then then reload the data into the new repositories.
      Instructions for performing these operations can be found at <ulink
      url="http://svnbook.red-bean.com/en/1.1/ch05s03.html#svn-ch-5-sect-3.5"/>.
      </para>
    </note> -->

    <bridgehead renderas="sect3">Subversion Server Dependencies</bridgehead>

    <bridgehead renderas="sect4">Required</bridgehead>
    <para><xref linkend="subversion"/> and
    <xref linkend="openssh"/></para>

  </sect2>

  <sect2 role="configuration">
    <title>Setting up a Subversion Server.</title>

    <para>The following instructions will install a
    <application>Subversion</application> server, which will be set up
    to use <application>OpenSSH</application> as the secure remote access
    method, with <command>svnserve</command> available for anonymous
    access.</para>

    <para>Configuration of the <application>Subversion</application> server
    consists of the following steps:</para>

    <sect3>
      <title>1. Setup Users, Groups, and Permissions</title>

      <para>You'll need to be user
      <systemitem class='username'>root</systemitem> for the initial portion of
      configuration. Create the <systemitem class="username">svn</systemitem>
      user and group with the following commands:</para>

<screen role="root"><userinput>groupadd -g 56 svn &amp;&amp;
useradd -c "SVN Owner" -d /home/svn -m -g svn -s /bin/false -u 56 svn</userinput></screen>

      <para>If you plan to have multiple repositories, you should have a
      group dedicated to each repository for ease of administration. Create
      the <systemitem class="groupname">svntest</systemitem> group for the test
      repository and add the <systemitem class="username">svn</systemitem>
      user to that group with the following commands:</para>

<screen role="root"><userinput>groupadd -g 57 svntest &amp;&amp;
usermod -G svntest -a svn</userinput></screen>

    </sect3>

    <sect3>
      <title>2. Create a Subversion repository.</title>

      <para>With subversion-1.1.0 and greater, a new type of repository
      data-store is available, FSFS. There is a tradeoff for speed with
      the new backend, however, the repository can now be placed on a
      network mount, and any corruption does not require an admin to
      recover the repository.  For more information and comparison between
      FSFS and BDB, see <ulink
      url="http://svnbook.red-bean.com/svnbook-1.1/ch05.html#svn-ch-5-sect-1.2.A"/>.
      </para>

      <para>Create a new <application>Subversion</application> repository with
      the following commands:</para>

<screen role="root"><userinput>install -v -m 0755 -d /srv/svn &amp;&amp;
install -v -m 0755 -o svn -g svn -d /srv/svn/repositories &amp;&amp;
svnadmin create --fs-type fsfs /srv/svn/repositories/svntest</userinput></screen>

      <para>Now that the repository is created, it should be populated with
      with something useful. You'll need to have a predefined directory
      layout set up exactly as you want your repository to look. For
      example, here is a sample BLFS layout setup with a root of
      <filename>svntest/</filename>. You'll need to setup a directory
      tree similar to the following:</para>

<screen><literal>svntest/            # The name of the repository
   trunk/           # Contains the existing source tree
      BOOK/
      bootscripts/
      edguide/
      patches/
      scripts/
   branches/        # Needed for additional branches
   tags/            # Needed for tagging release points</literal></screen>

      <para>Once you've created your directory layout as shown above, you
      are ready to do the initial import:</para>

<screen role="root"><userinput>svn import -m "Initial import." \
    <replaceable>&lt;/path/to/source/tree&gt;</replaceable>      \
    file:///srv/svn/repositories/svntest</userinput></screen>

      <para>Now change owner and group information on the
      repository, and add an unprivileged user to the
      <systemitem class="groupname">svn</systemitem> and
      <systemitem class="groupname">svntest</systemitem> groups:</para>

<screen role="root"><userinput>chown -R svn:svntest /srv/svn/repositories/svntest    &amp;&amp;
chmod -R g+w         /srv/svn/repositories/svntest    &amp;&amp;
chmod g+s            /srv/svn/repositories/svntest/db &amp;&amp;
usermod -G svn,svntest -a <replaceable>&lt;username&gt;</replaceable></userinput></screen>

      <para><systemitem class="groupname">svntest</systemitem> is the group
      assigned to the svntest repository. As mentioned earlier, this eases
      administration of multiple repositories when using
      <application>OpenSSH</application> for authentication. Going forward,
      you'll need to add your unprivileged user, and any additional users that
      you wish to have write access to the repository, to the
      <systemitem class="groupname">svn</systemitem> and
      <systemitem class="groupname">svntest</systemitem> groups.</para>

      <para>In addition, you'll notice that the new repository's
      <filename>db</filename> directory is set-groupID. If the reasoning is
      not immediately obvious, when using any external authentication method
      (such as <command>ssh</command>), the sticky bit is set so that all
      new files will be owned by the user, but group of
      <systemitem class="groupname">svntest</systemitem>. Anyone in the
      <systemitem class="groupname">svntest</systemitem> group can create
      files, but still give the entire group write access to those
      files. This avoids locking out other users from the repository.</para>

      <para>Now, return to an unprivileged user account, and take a
      look at the new repository using <command>svnlook</command>:</para>

<screen><userinput>svnlook tree /srv/svn/repositories/svntest/</userinput></screen>

      <note>
        <para>You may need to log out and back in again to refresh your group
        memberships. '<command>su <replaceable>&lt;username&gt;</replaceable></command>'
        should work as well.</para>
      </note>

    </sect3>

    <sect3>
      <title>3. Configure the Server</title>

      <para>As mentioned previously, these instructions will configure the
      server to use only <command>ssh</command> for write access to the
      repository and to provide anonymous access using
      <command>svnserve</command>. There are several other ways to provide
      access to the repository. These additional configurations are best
      explained at <ulink url="http://svnbook.red-bean.com/"/>.</para>

      <para>Access configuration needs to be done for each repository.
      Create the <filename>svnserve.conf</filename> file for the svntest
      repository using the following commands:</para>

<screen role="root"><userinput>cp /srv/svn/repositories/svntest/conf/svnserve.conf \
   /srv/svn/repositories/svntest/conf/svnserve.conf.default &amp;&amp;

cat &gt; /srv/svn/repositories/svntest/conf/svnserve.conf &lt;&lt; "EOF"
<literal>[general]
anon-access = read
auth-access = write</literal>
EOF</userinput></screen>

      <para>There is not a lot to the configuration file at all. You'll
      notice that only the general section is required. Take a look at the
      <filename>svnserve.conf.default</filename> file for information on using
      <command>svnserve</command>'s built-in authentication method.</para>

    </sect3>

    <sect3 id="svnserver-init">
      <title>4. Starting the Server</title>
<!--
      <para>There are a couple of ways to start <command>svnserve</command>.
      The most common way is to start it as an <command>inetd</command> or
      <command>xinetd</command> process. Alternately, you can use a
      bootscript to start the service at startup.</para>

      <note>
        <para>If you do not wish to provide anonymous access to your svn
        repositories or use <command>svnserve</command>'s built-in
        authentication, you do not need to run
        <command>svnserve</command>.</para>
      </note>

      <para>If you use <command>inetd</command>, add a line to
      <filename>/etc/inetd.conf</filename> using the following
      commands:</para>

      <indexterm zone="svnserver svnserver-init">
        <primary sortas="e-etc-inetd.conf">/etc/inetd.conf</primary>
      </indexterm>

<screen role="root"><userinput>cat &gt;&gt; /etc/inetd.conf &lt;&lt; "EOF"
<literal>svn stream tcp nowait svn /usr/bin/svnserve svnserve -i</literal>
EOF</userinput></screen>

      <para>If you use <command>xinetd</command>, the following command will
      create the <application>Subversion</application> server file as
      <filename>/etc/xinetd.d/svn</filename>:</para>

      <indexterm zone="svnserver svnserver-init ">
        <primary sortas="e-etc-xinetd.d-svn">/etc/xinetd.d/svn</primary>
      </indexterm>

<screen role="root"><userinput>cat &gt;&gt; /etc/xinetd.d/svn &lt;&lt; "EOF"
<literal># Begin /etc/xinetd.d/svn

service svn
{
        port                    = 3690
        socket_type             = stream
        protocol                = tcp
        wait                    = no
        user                    = svn
        server                  = /usr/bin/svnserve
        server_args             = -i -r /srv/svn/repositories
}

# End /etc/xinetd.d/svn</literal>
EOF</userinput></screen> -->

      <para>
        To start the <command>svnserve</command> daemon at boot,
        install the systemd unit from the <xref linkend="bootscripts"/>
        package by running the following command as the
        <systemitem class="username">root</systemitem> user:
      </para>

      <indexterm zone="svnserver svnserver-init">
        <primary sortas="f-svnserve">svnserve</primary>
      </indexterm>

<screen role="root"><userinput>make install-svnserve</userinput></screen>

      <para>Additionally, the instructions above require that svn server
      uses <command>umask 002</command> so that all new files will
      be writable by owner and group. This can be achieved by creating
      a systemd unit override file by running the following command:</para>

<screen role="root"><userinput>mkdir -p /etc/systemd/system/svnserve.service.d
echo "UMask=0002" > /etc/systemd/system/svnserve.service.d/99-user.conf</userinput></screen>

      <para>Options which are passed to <command>svnserve</command> daemon
      can be changed in <filename>/etc/default/svnserve</filename>.</para>

    </sect3>

  </sect2>

</sect1>