My last post documented how to install Subversion. This post will cover the resulting configuration of Apache, plus the creation of the initial repository.
When you install Subversion, it adds two LoadModule lines to /etc/apache2/httpd.conf. This is not wanted as the Debian version of Apache2 installs things slightly differently from the default Apache (httpd.conf is not used, all this configuration now lives in apache2.conf, plus the loading of modules is done differently). edit /etc/apache2/httpd.conf and remove the 2 uncommented LoadModule lines.
Debian loads modules a little differently that the default Apache2. It lists the available modules as individual configuration files within a mods-available directory, then enables these by linking to them from a mods-enabled directory.
We need to create the two required module configuration files that are required by Subversion (we just removed them from /etc/apache2/httpd.conf!):
cd /etc/apache2/mods-available
echo "LoadModule dav_svn_module /usr/lib/apache2/modules/mod_dav_svn.so" > dav_svn.load
echo "LoadModule authz_svn_module /usr/lib/apache2/modules/mod_authz_svn.so" > authz_svn.load
Now we need to enable them so that Apache will load them when it restarts:
cd ../mods-enabled
ln -s ../mods-available/dav.load
ln -s ../mods-available/dav_svn.load
That's the modules configured, now we need to create the Subversion virtual host entry that will point to our Subversion repository. Again, Debian does things a little different with virtual hosts, it has them listed as separate virtual host configuration files in sites-available and then enables them in sites-enabled:
cd /etc/apache2/sites-available
Due to Blogger being a pain when it comes to trying to post details containing lots of <'s and >'s, I'm including a link to an almost-copy of my Subversion virtual host configuration file. As you can see, it points the WebDAV & Subversion modules at /var/svn which will be the root of our repository, and uses Apache's htpasswd authentication to validate access.
Now we need to make the Subversion site available to Apache:
cd ../sites-enabled
ln -s ../sites-available/svn
Ok, that's Apache all done and dusted, now we just have to actually create the repository and then we are done.
The repository must be 'owned' by the same user that Apache runs as, otherwise read/write access may be blocked and all sorts of strange problems can occur, Debian runs Apache as user www-data by default:
mkdir /var/svn
chown www-data:www-data /var/svn
Now that the repository's root directory has been created, it's best to be the same user as Apache when creating the repository to ensure the files are created with the correct permissions:
su – www-data
svnadmin create /var/svn
That's the repository created, now we need to restart Apache to let the WebDAV & Subversion modules know that the repository is now available:
/etc/init.d/apache2 reload
If you now point your browser at http://svn.yourdomain.com you should see a web view of your new repository...what's that? It's asking for a username and password? Oh yes, we need to create any required users via the Apache htpasswd utility:
cd /etc/apache2
htpasswd -c svn.htpasswd your_username
Ok, try that URL again, you should be able to login and see a rather basic view of an empty Subversion repository. There is a slightly nicer skin that can be applied to Subversion to make the repository view cleaner, it's tucked away in the /usr/local/src/subversion-1.2.1/tools/xslt directory. These XSL and CSS files need to be added to the virtual host's document root, but as you may have noticed the DocumentRoot is the root of the Subversion repository. This means that you just have to import the two files into Subversion for the changes to take effect:
cd /usr/local/src/subversion-1.2.1/tools/xslt
svn import svnindex.xsl http://svn.yourdomain.com/svnindex.xsl -m "Improved web interface."
svn import svnindex.css http://svn.yourdomain.com/svnindex.css -m "Improved web interface."
Now revisit that URL again, and it should be a slightly nicer view of the repository, now with two files in it, svnindex.xsl and svnindex.css.
That's it, the repository is fully available to any user that you have created an htpasswd entry for in /etc/apache2/svn.htpasswd and who has a suitable Subversion client (TortoiseSVN and RapidSVN are two that I have used).
For full documentation on how to really use Subversion, please take a look at the O'Reilly Version Control with Subversion online book or buy the rather excellent book Pragmatic Version Control Using Subversion by Mike Mason.
Please let me know if you found this post (and the last one on how to install Subversion) useful, if so I might start to blog about Subversion even more...
UPDATE: I've moved some files around on my server, I've not changed any of the content of this post.
Technorati Tags: Subversion, Debian, Apache, Mike Mason, Andrew Beacock
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