Subversion server

I recently replace an older distro with Fedora 14 and wanted to get svnserver working as it had been. Here's a sample of making it work with xinetd.

I have an existing repository located at /usr/local/svn/repositories. None of the examples I found on the web used the svnserve option to restrict the repository location so I had to roll my own.

I elected to use xinetd to provide the subversion service. It was necessary to install xinetd before I started.

yum install xinetd

There are multiple entries for svn in the /etc/services however none for svnserve. I added the following lines to /etc/services.

svnserve             3690/tcp                        # Subversion
svnserve             3690/udp                        # Subversion

I then had to add a file, /etc/xinetd.d/svnserve which looks like:

service svnserve
{
        socket_type     = stream
        protocol        = tcp
        user            = svnadmin
        wait            = no
        disable         = no
        server          = /usr/bin/svnserve
        server_args     = -i -r /usr/local/svn/repositories
        port            = 3690
}

I elected to add a new user, svnadmin rather than use an existing user.

I edited the /etc/group file and added the following line in the correct numeric order:

svnadmin:x:56:svnadmin

The number 56 is not magic, I simply used the same group number as the equivalent on a Ubuntu system.

I then added the svnadmin user via:

adduser -u 56 -g 56 svnadmin