SVN server only allows commits when run as root

Question

So as of two days ago, i had myself a shiny new SVN server. I set it up for WebDAV with no problems. It wasn't until i tried to host multiple projects that i ran into trouble.

At first, i had all of the project folders in one repository. But then i saw the error in my ways, and switched to multiple repositories. Rather than edit the /etc/apache2/sites-available/default file with every new project, i elected to use the svnserve deamon.

So, the problem is, i cn only make commits from Eclipse when the daemon is run as root. If not, I get a Permission Denied Error. Any ideas? Here are the directory stats:

    drwxr-xr-x 6 root root 4096 2011-06-07 09:38 .
    drwxr-xr-x 4 root root 4096 2011-06-05 00:48 ..
    lrwxrwxrwx 1 svn  svn     6 2011-06-06 22:35 all -> repos/
    drw-rw-r-- 6 svn  svn  4096 2011-06-06 13:53 EmpowerView
    drw-rw-r-- 6 svn  svn  4096 2011-06-06 13:54 GoogleVoicemail
    -rw-rw-r-- 2 svn  svn   307 2011-06-07 08:47 passwd
    drw-rw-r-- 6 svn  svn  4096 2011-06-06 13:54 PerlinNoise
    drw-rw-r-- 7 svn  svn  4096 2011-06-05 02:15 repos
    -rw-rw-r-- 3 svn  svn  2278 2011-06-07 08:46 svnserve.conf

EDIT

I tried the suggested re-checkout with the daemon not running as root, and still no cigar. Same permission error.

EDIT 2

I also tried running the daemon as the user svn, but no such luck. At one point I screwed up my primary group and no longer had sudo privileges! I had to hack into my own server through a buddy's account

Answer 1

You're having a classic permission issue, your repository is possibly located at a location like /some/dir/repos with /some being svn not being able to access /some because svn does not own /some and:

• svn is in the group of /some, but the permissions are set like 700
• svn is not in the group of /some and the permissions are set like 750 In both cases, svn cannot descend in /some because the execute-bit is missing on /some.

Two solution are possible:

• add the other execute bit to /some so the permissions look like 751
• add the group execute bit to /some and make sure the user svn is a member of the group

You need to check all directories above your repo, so if your path looks like /i/am/very/long/repos, you need to check /i, /i/am till /i/am/very/long/repos.