/mike

A few weeks ago I set out to install subversion (svn for those not in the know) on my (mt) (dv) 3.0 server. More than a few Google searches turned up a few different sites and the (mt) knowledgebase. The problem was that there wasn’t one single post that took me through the full process. Thankfully I have some very smart friends that helped me out.

Requirements

In order to set up svn on your server you’ll need a few things. Anyone with the (dv) 3.5 server can skip the installation instructions. SVN is installed with the developer tools on (dv) 3.5 servers.

• root ssh access — to get this just fill out a support request with (mt) and let them know what you want the password to be
• Terminal or other ssh app
• Your servers IP address — obviously
• Some patience and understanding of *NIX commands

The rest of this little tutorial may seem a little simple for some but I want to make sure I don’t lose anyone that is just getting started with svn.

Getting Started

Once you’ve got ssh access, the first thing you’ll need to do is log in to your server with ssh root@12.34.56.78. After you’ve logged in, the prompt will change to indicate that you’re working on your server now.

Installing svn

Now we’ve got to download svn to our server. There are a couple different ways out there, one being to install and use yum and the other being to manually download svn to our server and make the installer. I decided that downloading and making the installer was a better way to go. So, in order to do that just follow these steps:

1. Make sure you’re at the root directory (prompt should say [root@12.34.56.78 ~]# or something similar)

2. Download svn source from this list using wget.

   For Example:

   wget http://subversion.tigris.org/downloads/subversion-1.4.5.tar.bz2 

3. Download the dependencies from the same list as above with wget

   wget http://subversion.tigris.org/downloads/subversion-deps-1.4.5.tar.bz2 

4. Now we’ve got to extract the downloaded files with
   tar xjvf subversion-1.4.5.tar.bz2 and
   tar xjvf subversion-deps-1.4.5.tar.bz2
5. Change directories to the subversion folder we just extracted with
   cd subversion-1.4.5
6. Make the installer and install svn with these commands (there will be lots of text scrolling through the window after each command so be sure to wait for the prompt before entering the next command command):

   ./configure -with--apxs=/usr/sbin/apxs
   make
   make install

You’ve now successfully installed the svn software on your server. Next up is configuring svn and your server so you can use svn for your projects.

Subversion and Apache

We need to make sure the svn module is being loaded each time Apache is started in order for svn to work properly in this type of setup. In order to do that we’ll have to open up the httpd.conf file using vi.

vi is pretty tricky if you don’t have any experience with it so I’ll do my best to explain exactly what you’ll need to do. If you’re not sure about the following steps find someone who’s got some experience to help you out.

We can use vi /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf to load the proper file into the vi editor. There should be a list of modules that get loaded when Apache starts and we’re looking for one called dav_svn_module and another called authz_svn_module. Make sure both are listed and neither line begins with a hash (#) mark.

Setting up the Subdomain

Out of all the steps in this little runthrough this is the part I’ll be the most general about since it’s very straightforward and easy.

You’ll need to decide where you want your repositories to live. Most people, myself included, like to create a subdomain on our servers for svn. The subdomains, in most cases, are simply svn.domainname.com. You’re more than welcome to use the main domain and simply keep your repository in a location like yoursite.com/svn/. Either way you’ll need to know the full path to where you’d like to store your repository.

To set up your subdomain, use the following steps:

1. Log into your Plesk admin
2. Select the domain you’d like to create a subdomain for
3. Once you’re on the domain admin page there will be an icon for subdomains, select that
4. Select “Add New Subdomain”
5. Choose your name for this subdomain and also choose to “Create a separate FTP user account for this subdomain” (and enter a username and password for it)
6. Save this subdomain and check that it’s working by going to it in your browser

Deciding on a Repository Structure

The next step is to set up the heart of svn, the repository. But, before we do that you need to put a little bit of thought into how you’d like to work with svn and it’s repositories. I created and removed various repositories about five or six times before I finally settled on how I wanted to set it up.

What you’ll need to decide is whether you’d like one repository for all of your projects and websites or have a separate repository for each project/site. In the end I went with a mix of the two, for my larger sites I have one repository for the site, and for the Screenflicker umbrella I’m using one repository with different branches.

Much more detailed thoughts and explanations can be found in the Strategies for Repository Deployment chapter of the Subversion book.

Creating the Repository

Now that you’ve figured out how you want to deploy your repositories, lets create one. The first step is creating a folder to hold the repository. While still in your Terminal application and connected to your server use the mkdir command to create a new directory, for example:

mkdir /var/www/vhosts/yourdomain.com/subdomains/svn/httpdocs/repo/ 

When the directory is created you’ll need to give it the proper permissions. For this you can use the chmod command like so:

chmod 0777 /var/www/vhosts/yourdomain.com/subdomains/svn/httpdocs/repo 

Still with me? Good, cause now you get to create the repository. The code is simple enough now that you’ve laid out the groundwork. All you need to do is type:

svnadmin create /var/www/vhosts/yourdomain.com/subdomains/svn/httpdocs/repo 

(substitute the path to your repo folder if you chose a different location).

Securing the Subversion Directory

Now that svn is set up, we’ll need to secure the directory so it’s a little more private — wouldn’t want to let everyone out there have a peek at what you’re doing in svn would you?

For this we’ll need to use the vi editor again to open the vhost.conf file with:

vi /var/www/vhosts/yourdomain.com/subdomains/svn/conf/vhost.conf 

This file is probably empty so we’ll need to insert some new lines. In order to do that, hit the “i” key. Now add the following text:

#svn.yourdomain.com -- vhost.conf file
<location />
   DAV svn
   SVNPath /path/to/repo/
   AuthType Basic
   AuthName "Your Domain Subversion Repository"
   AuthUserFile /etc/svn-auth-file
   Require valid-user
</location>

Be sure to substitute /path/to/repo/ with the proper path to where you’ve created your repository, like you’ve done in the previous steps.

Save the changes to the vhost.conf file and exit out of vi by hitting the “esc” key and typing :x (followed by “Return”).

Now you just need to add the user that you will use to authenticate against the vhost.conf file. To do that run the following command and choose a password when prompted to:

htpassword -c /etc/svn-auth-file USERNAME substituting USERNAME for your username of choice.

Restart the Server

The final step is to simply restart your server. If you’d like to use /usr/local/psa/admin/sbin/websrvmng -a -v to restart Apache or you’d rather log into Plesk and restart the server that way, it’s completely up to you.

Either way, once you’ve restarted the server, visit your new svn URI via the browser, using the username and password you created in the final step when prompted, to see that it’s working. Of course, you won’t see any files but you should get a message that you’re looking at a repository and what version of Subversion is running.

The only thing you’ve got left to do is import some files and get to work on your projects.