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 subversion and xinetd before I started.
yum install xinetd subversion
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
I then edited the /etc/password file and changed the svnadmin entry to:
svnadmin:x:56:56:Svn Admin:/usr/local/svn/repositories:/sbin/nologin
The existing repository had invalid group and user IDs so I changed the ownership via:
chown -R svnadmin.svnadmin /usr/local/svn
If everything is correct, restarting xinetd should make the repository available.
service xinetd restart
A sample check out:
svn co svn://192.168.2.44/memdb/trunk memdb A memdb/validate.php A memdb/1mygrid.html A memdb/saverecord.php A memdb/register.html ...
If it doesn't work, you may find error messages from xinetd in the /var/log/messages file. A sample of one that I encountered:
Jan 2 08:50:37 chinaberry xinetd[11486]: service/protocol combination not in /etc/services: svnserve/tcp Jan 2 08:50:37 chinaberry xinetd[11486]: xinetd Version 2.3.14 started with libwrap loadavg labeled-networking options compiled in. Jan 2 08:50:37 chinaberry xinetd[11486]: Started working: 0 available services
That was before I had place the correct entries in the /etc/services file.
Note that this example was using an already existing repository. If you are creating a new repository using these instructions you may run into issues with respect to subversion security and it may not be xinetd or server configuration related.