svn+ssh multiple users without having root access

Question

i have a svn repository on a server that i access through svn+ssh. i have only user access (not root) and i cannot install mod_dav.

is there a way to configure multiple user access (ie. with multiple ssh keys) to the svn repository without giving the other svn users full ssh access ?

Answer 1

Sure, just drop the extra keys into the authorized_keys with a forced command of /usr/bin/svnserve -t (or alternate path as appropriate).

Answer 2

What womble meant is that you can assign only one command to a ssh public key in the authorized_keys.

command="/usr/bin/svnserve -t" ssh-rsa ...

In this example the user accessing via his ssh key can only run the command /usr/bin/svnserve -t.

Answer 3

There are three ways to access subversion:

1. Via apache
2. svnserve
3. svnserve over SSH

http://svnbook.red-bean.com/en/1.5/svn.serverconfig.html

If you've ruled out all of these then you need to move your subversion repository to somewhere else or not give people access.

Answer 4

You can give each of the people you want to have access a public key which they can use to connect through the same SSH user. Forcing each key to only be able to run svnserve -t --tunnel-user=<username> gives each key a separate SVN identity. This is covered well in a blog post by James Gardner.