Install and Configure SVN on CentOS

This tutorial will cover the step by step instructions necessary to install SVN on CentOS and configure it to work with Apache.

Install mod_dav_svn right away which is required to make SVN work with Apache.

$ yum install mod_dav_svn subversion

Once we have installed svn we want to create a repository somewhere.

$ svnadmin create /path/to/<repo_name>

Since we will be accessing the repository through Apache, we need to make sure the Apache user has proper permissions to access the repository.

$ chown -R apache:apache /path/to/<repo_name>

We are going to make some simple modifications to the configuration file for the repository to allow users access to it.

$ vi /path/to/<repo_name>/conf/svnserve.conf

Uncomment the lines like so:

auth-access = write
password-db = passwd

Create a htpasswd file which will contain usernames and passwords that your users will use to gain access to the repository.

$ htpasswd -c /path/to/<repo_name>/conf/passwd <username>
New password: 
Re-type new password: 
Adding password for user <username>

You can continue to add more users to the file with the following command:

$ htpasswd /path/to/<repo_name>/conf/passwd <username>

Here is where the mod_dav_svn module will come into play. We are going to setup an Apache config file specifically for subversion that will give us http access to the repository. Typically your Apache configuration will have a line like the following that includes all configuration files in the conf.d folder, if not just add the following line:

Include conf.d/*.conf

Once that is taken care of create the following file:

$ vi /etc/httpd/conf.d/subversion.conf

Add the following into the configuration, note that the path /svn is where the repository will be served out of:

LoadModule dav_svn_module     modules/mod_dav_svn.so
LoadModule authz_svn_module   modules/mod_authz_svn.so

<Location /svn>
    DAV svn
    SVNPath /path/to/<repo_name>
    Authtype Basic
    AuthName "My Repository"
    AuthUserFile /path/to/<repo_name>/conf/passwd
    Require valid-user
</Location>

Restart apache for the new configuration to take affect:

$ service httpd restart

Now we simply type the address of where we are hosting the repository into our browser and we should be all set.

http://<domain>/svn

Note that this process can be repeated for multiple repositories on the same server, just make sure the paths in your <Location> directive are different. So for instance our subversion.conf could look something like this:

LoadModule dav_svn_module     modules/mod_dav_svn.so
LoadModule authz_svn_module   modules/mod_authz_svn.so

<Location /svn>
    DAV svn
    SVNPath /path/to/<repo_name>
    Authtype Basic
    AuthName "My Repository"
    AuthUserFile /path/to/<repo_name>/conf/passwd
    Require valid-user
</Location>

<Location /svn2>
    DAV svn
    SVNPath /path/to/<repo_name2>
    Authtype Basic
    AuthName "My Repository 2"
    AuthUserFile /path/to/<repo_name>/conf/passwd
    Require valid-user
</Location> 

Note that we are using the same passwd file from the first repository, there is no need to create a separate set of users if you don't have to.