How to Setup an Apache Subversion (SVN) Server on CentOS 7
Modified on: Mon, Aug 15, 2016 at 4:04 pm EST
CentOS Linux Guides Programming Server Apps System Admin
Apache Subversion (SVN) is a widely used version control solution which helps in storing files of various versions, like source code and documents.
In this article, I will show you how to use Apache Subversion and Apache to build an SVN server on a Vultr CentOS 7 server instance.
Prerequisites
VM running CentOS 7 (minimal install preferred, but not required).
A sudo user for login. Another Vultr article describes the details about how to setup a sudo user.
Step 1: Update the system
sudo yum update
sudo shutdown -r now
After the reboot, log into the system again using the same sudo user.
Step 2: Install Apache
Install Apache using YUM:
sudo yum install httpd
Remove Apache's default welcome page:
sudo sed -i 's/^/#&/g' /etc/httpd/conf.d/welcome.conf
Prevent Apache from displaying files in the "/var/www/html" directory:
sudo sed -i "s/Options Indexes FollowSymLinks/Options FollowSymLinks/" /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf
Step 3: Install SVN and the mod_dav_svn module
To make SVN work with Apache, you need to install an Apache module "moddavsvn" in addition to SVN:
sudo yum install subversion mod_dav_svn
Step 4: Configure SVN
1) Modify the SVN configuration file
sudo vi /etc/httpd/conf.modules.d/10-subversion.conf
The file should read:
LoadModule dav_svn_module modules/mod_dav_svn.so
LoadModule authz_svn_module modules/mod_authz_svn.so
LoadModule dontdothat_module modules/mod_dontdothat.so
Append the following segment:
<Location /svn>
DAV svn
SVNParentPath /svn
AuthName "SVN Repos"
AuthType Basic
AuthUserFile /etc/svn/svn-auth
AuthzSVNAccessFile /svn/authz
Require valid-user
</Location>
Save and quit:
:wq!
Note: In this configuration, we specified an HTTP access authentication file "/etc/svn/svn-auth" and a user permission control file "/svn/authz". Both of them will be created later.
2) Create an SVN repo
sudo mkdir /svn
cd /svn
sudo svnadmin create repo1
sudo chown -R apache:apache repo1
3) Setup SVN user accounts
Use the following commands to create an HTTP access authentication file "/svn/svn-auth" and an SVN user account "user001":
sudo mkdir /etc/svn
sudo htpasswd -cm /etc/svn/svn-auth user001
sudo chown root:apache /etc/svn/svn-auth
sudo chmod 640 /etc/svn/svn-auth
If you want to create more SVN user accounts, refer to the following commands:
sudo htpasswd -m /etc/svn/svn-auth user002
sudo htpasswd -m /etc/svn/svn-auth user003
Warning: Do not use the "-c" flag from now on, or you will rebuild the authentication file and erase all the user accounts you setup earlier.
4) Setup permissions for users
sudo cp /svn/repo1/conf/authz /svn/authz
sudo vi /svn/authz
Assume that:
User "user001" is the administrator.
User "user002" is a qualified user who owns read and write permissions to the SVN repo "repo1".
User "user003" is a trainee who can only read the contents of SVN repo "repo1".
Then you can modify the settings within as below:
[groups]
admin=user001
repo1_user=user002
repo1_trainee=user003
[/]
@admin=rw
[repo1:/]
@repo1_user=rw
@repo1_trainee=r
Save and quit:
:wq!
Step 5: Start Apache and modify firewall rules
Start Apache:
sudo systemctl start httpd.service
sudo systemctl enable httpd.service
Open the HTTP service port:
sudo firewall-cmd --zone=public --permanent --add-service=http
sudo firewall-cmd --reload
Finally, use the following path to access the SVN repo "repo1" on your server from an SVN client:
http://<your-server-ip>/svn/repo1/
That concludes our tutorial. Thank you for reading.
