Unable to get subversion 1.4 to work

[Ryan Schmidt]

On Oct 12, 2006, at 08:19, Elise van Looij wrote:

> A few days ago I decided I really needed version control, so I  
> installed Subversion. I already have Apache2, mySQL and PHP  
> installed via DarwinPorts, liked the simplicity of the process and  
> decided to go the same route with Subversion. The problem is I  
> can't Subversion to get to work for the life of me, always getting  
> the same error "svn: Could not open the requested SVN filesystem"

I use the MacPorts versions of Subversion and Apache 2 to serve my  
repositories. Works great. That error message generally means the  
server is looking for the repositories in the wrong place.

> I've installed the following:
> subversion @1.4.0_0+mod_dav_svn
> apache2 @2.2.3_0      (I did an update around the same time)
>
> I've used svnadmin to create a repository at /usr/local/svn- 
> repository.
> Then I've edited the httpd.conf file as follows:
> ------------------------------------------------
> Listen 8080
>
> LoadModule dav_svn_module     modules/mod_dav_svn.so
>
> <Location /svn>
>    DAV svn
>    SVNPath /usr/local/svn-repository
> </Location>
> ----------------------------------------------

So you want the repository to be in /usr/local/svn-repository; that's  
fine.

> According to all the tutorials and articles I've been able to find,  
> I should now be able to connect to svn via http://localhost:8080/ 
> svn but all I get is the "Could not open the requested SVN  
> filesystem". I've tried changing the owner of the directory to www  
> (which is the HTTP user), but still no go.
>
> When I try to do an import on the command line, I get:
>
> svn: PROPFIND request failed on '/svn'
> svn: Could not open the requested SVN filesystem"
>
> The Apache error log says:
>
> [Thu Oct 12 12:05:39 2006] [error] [client ::1] Could not open the  
> requested SVN filesystem  [500, #2]
> [Thu Oct 12 12:05:39 2006] [error] [client ::1] File does not  
> exist: /opt/local/apache2/htdocs/favicon.ico
> [Thu Oct 12 12:06:08 2006] [error] [client ::1] (20014)Internal  
> error: Can't open file '/usr/local/Subversion/format': No such file  
> or directory

The error message says Apache thinks it's supposed to look for the  
repository in /usr/local/Subversion. Why does it think that?  
Somewhere in your Apache configuration files it must have this path  
defined. Find that place and change it to the path you wanted it to  
look at, /usr/local/svn-repository, or if the lines you found are  
redundant with the lines you already had, remove them.