Subversion how-to for NorStore

NorStore uses the svnserve server solution to connect local svn repositories to the internet.

For every new repository, an svnmerge demon is started as background process on the NorStore node noresg.norstore.uio.no. The svn repository recieves the URL svn://noresg.norstore.uio.no/<repository name>.

To administer svn repositories on NorStore, following prerequisites must be fulfilled:

• you must have a user account at NorStore
• your NorStore user account must be member in the ns2345k group
• your NorStore user account must have access to noresg.norstore.uio.no

Users that fulfill these prerequisites can take local ns2345k repositories stored in (/projects/NN2345K/svn) online/offline and have the full flexibility to grant read/write access for NorStore svn repositories to external users (i.e., the normal use of the repositories does not require a NorStore account).

Log on to norstore.uio.no via ssh.

Change directory to /projects/NS2345K/svn.

Create a new svn repository with

svnadmin create testrepo

where testrepo is to be replaced with a name of your choice.

The new repository is now set up in /projects/NS2345K/svn/testrepo.

Edit testrepo/conf/svnserve.conf for general customisation of access rights. IMPORTANT: Make sure to remove all leading blanks when activating an option.

The default is read/write access for authenticated users and no access for anonymous.

To limited access to read for authenticated users, change

# auth-access = write

to

auth-access = read  

To grant anonymous read, change

# anon-access = none     

to

anon-access = read

The users of the repository are defined in testrepo/conf/passwd with user name and password, e.g.

[users]
harry = harryssecret
sally = sallyssecret
guestuser = friendly

To activate the customisation, edit svnserve.conf and uncomment the line

# password-db = passwd

to

password-db = passwd

Further fine tuning of access rights can be done in testrepo/conf/authz. E.g.,

[/projects/NS2345K/svn/testrepo]
guestuser = r

limits the access of the user guest-user to read-only access. The authz customisation is activated in svnserve.conf by uncommenting

# authz-db = authz

to

authz-db = authz
     

Log on to noresg.norstore.uio.no via ssh.

To take a repository with name testrepo online, do

svnserve -d -r /projects/NS2345K/svn/testrepo --log-file /projects/NS2345K/svn/testrepo/svnserve.log --pid-file /projects/NS2345K/svn/testrepo/svnserve.pid

An svnserve demon has now been started as a background process on noresg.norstore.uio.no. The process id is logged in /projects/NS2345K/svn/testrepo/svnserve.pid.

To take the repository offline again, do

kill `cat /projects/NS2345K/svn/testrepo/svnserve.pid`

After taking the repository online, the URL of the repository testrepo is svn://noresg.norstore.uio.no/testrepo

To checkout the repository, do

svn co svn://noresg.norstore.uio.no/testrepo

Change directory to testrepo with

cd testrepo 

Create a dummy file with

echo test > README 

Commit the repository with

svn commit -m "my commit message"