Using PAM from svnserve without Apache

Question

I am investigating the options for upgrading a Subversion 1.4 server to 1.6.

I have been told by colleagues here that in an ideal world we should be moving towards using PAM to authenticate the Subversion users.

Currently Subversion is running as an Apache module in an instance of HTTPD that also hosts a heavily customised PHP build.

Therefore, because I don't want to break PHP as part of the upgrade of Subversion, I am wondering about running Subversion in a more independent way, specifically svnserve.

Is it possible for svnserve to authenticate against PAM? I have searched online but have only found reference to using it within the context of Apache.

Answer 1

One approach is to use svnserve over SSH (see the Red Bean book for more information). SSH can be set up to use PAM for authentication, or you can use public keys to make life easier.