Setup subversion 403 Forbidden

Question

I have setup subversion according to this how to: http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/ubuntu/install-subversion-with-web-access-on-ubuntu/

So in the root directory of my server I have following folder: /var/snv. This folder will contain my svn repositories that I create this way

sudo svnadmin create /var/svn/myproject

Next I edited the dav_svn.conf file.

<Location /var/svn>

  DAV svn

  SVNParentPath /var/svn

  AuthType Basic
  Require valid-user
  AuthName "Subversion Repository"
  AuthUserFile /etc/apache2/dav_svn.passwd

</Location>

I try to access subversion via browser with http://myRootServer.com/var/svn. This asks me for username and password and when entering the correct data I get a 403 Forbidden error, You don't have permission to access /var/svn on this server.

Any ideas whats wrong?

Answer 1

When specifying an SVNParentPath, the actual location of the path (in this case, /var/svn/) isn't a valid location to request - there's no mechanism for serving an index of the child repositories.

A request to a child repository directly (/var/svn/myproject) should yield an index page for that repository, and should not be giving a 403 after successful authentication.

Answer 2

You can absolutely display a list of repositories using SVNParentPath.

You need to add the following to your apache configuration:

SVNListParentPath on