Apache-WebSVN process needs /root/.subversion access?

[Matt England <me...@mengland.net>]

Hello,

I had a running, Subversion system through svnserve and WebSVN.  Today (and 
presumably yesterday) the WebSVN system started to break--it wouldn't list 
files in the repos.

I found in my Apache logs these errors that seem to correspond to the 
WebSVN failures:

svn: Can't check path '/root/.subversion': Permission denied

When I give my Apache process (nobody) access to read this 
/root/.subversion directory (something I don't like to do), things seem to 
be working fine again.

My basic questions:

I see that .subversion has something to do with cacheing authentication (I 
think...as per 
http://svnbook.red-bean.com/nightly/en/svn-book.html#svn.advanced.confarea 
).  Why can a svn client not operate in all conditions without this 
directory (or presumably so)?

What happens when a process attempts to 'svn export' (as in WebSVN) and has 
no ~/.subversion directory (as in Apache's "nobody" account)?

Why would my 'nobody' account possibly be trying to access 
/root/.subversion?  Possibly because it's a httpd-started process?


Fyi: My system specs:
RH9
Subversion1.2.3
No Apache modules (only svnserve and local-repo access)

Any ideas on why I would have an operational system for some time and then 
it starts breaking?  I suspect you may not be able to give specifics; I'm 
just looking for potential pointers.  There were some recent system 
changes: I did move some dirs around in my web server *and* there was a 
kernel change from my VPS (virtual private server) host-system 
provider.  So, yes, it seems like some external event (like these) may have 
contributed to this problem.  I'm hoping answers to the above 2 questions 
can help sort these things out.

I'm sure this is a faq, but I have yet to find a definitive resource for 
answering this question.  Further, this symptom probably has many different 
root-cause problems associated with it, making it difficult if not 
impossible to make a 1-to-1 symptom-to-cause diagnosis without further info.

Thanks for any help,
-Matt


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Re: Apache-WebSVN process needs /root/.subversion access?

[Matt England <me...@mengland.net>]

At 10/11/2005 03:43 AM, Dimitri Papadopoulos-Orfanos wrote:
>What happened to the system between the moment it worked and the moment it 
>didn't? Software upgrade? Change in configuration files?

The original email I believe speaks to this; however the notes below seem 
to address the root of the issue (my system-config changes do not seem to 
be the "root" cause...pun intended :).

>>Why would my 'nobody' account possibly be trying to access 
>>/root/.subversion?  Possibly because it's a httpd-started process?
>
>Right, the value of HOME is probably /root and the cause is probably that 
>Apache is started as root. I don't know whether this is normal behavior or 
>not though.
>
>Have a look at this:
>         http://websvn.tigris.org/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=32

Yep, this would seem to answer my question.  I was stopping and restarting 
Apache as root recently, and previously Apache was starting as part of the 
/etc/rc.d scripts upon system startup...hence I suspect the Apache process 
picked up the /root $HOME environment variable on my manual start of it.

I applied the most-recent patch from the above link, and things are working 
now.  Thanks!

-Matt



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Re: Apache-WebSVN process needs /root/.subversion access?

[Tony Butt <to...@cea.com.au>]

Dimitri Papadopoulos-Orfanos wrote:

> Hi,
>
>> I had a running, Subversion system through svnserve and WebSVN. 
>> Today (and presumably yesterday) the WebSVN system started to
>> break--it wouldn't list files in the repos.
>
>
> What happened to the system between the moment it worked and the
> moment it didn't? Software upgrade? Change in configuration files?
>
>> Why would my 'nobody' account possibly be trying to access
>> /root/.subversion?  Possibly because it's a httpd-started process?
>
>
> Right, the value of HOME is probably /root and the cause is probably
> that Apache is started as root. I don't know whether this is normal
> behavior or not though.
>
> Have a look at this:
>     http://websvn.tigris.org/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=32
>
> Dimitri Papadopoulos
>

We have the same problem. Out server is Suse Enterprise Linux 9, and
every time the system management tool (yast2) finishes, it checks and
resets the permissions on a bunch of directories. This include /root/* ,
so websvn would run happily for days (or weeks), and then fail after I
used yast2.

This is configurable in the /etc/permissions* files.

Our apache server runs as wwwrun:www, and the wwwrun home directory is
certainly not /root, it is /var/lib/wwwrun, but websvn still needs
access to /root/.subversion

Haven't solved this one yet - we are just living with it so far.

Tony Butt
CEA Technologies
Canberra, Australia

Re: Apache-WebSVN process needs /root/.subversion access?

[Dimitri Papadopoulos-Orfanos <pa...@shfj.cea.fr>]

Hi,

> I had a running, Subversion system through svnserve and WebSVN.  Today 
> (and presumably yesterday) the WebSVN system started to break--it 
> wouldn't list files in the repos.

What happened to the system between the moment it worked and the moment 
it didn't? Software upgrade? Change in configuration files?

> Why would my 'nobody' account possibly be trying to access 
> /root/.subversion?  Possibly because it's a httpd-started process?

Right, the value of HOME is probably /root and the cause is probably 
that Apache is started as root. I don't know whether this is normal 
behavior or not though.

Have a look at this:
	http://websvn.tigris.org/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=32

Dimitri Papadopoulos

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