svnserve errors in the system logs

[Trent Fisher <tr...@oracle.com>]

I just discovered tons of spam in /var/log/messages on one of my servers 
(Linux RHEL 5.8 with Subversion 1.8.9) :

Sep 17 06:30:41 adc4110305 svnserve: sql_select option missing
Sep 17 06:30:41 adc4110305 svnserve: auxpropfunc error no mechanism 
available
Sep 17 06:30:41 adc4110305 svnserve: auxpropfunc error invalid parameter 
supplied

This error pops up everytime someone accesses a repository via svn+ssh.  
It doesn't seem to hinder functionality.  I can reproduce this simply by 
running "ssh adc4110305 svnserve -t" (the error pops up before I can 
type anything).

 From what I have gathered from my internet searches, it sounds like 
Cyrus SASL is getting involved.  Though I don't understand why, as I 
thought the tunnel mode was supposed to use the pre-authenticated 
username.  I tried messing with /etc/sasl2/svn.conf but only managed to 
make it worse.  One person suggested (on this very mailing list 5 years 
ago) removing the relevant cyrus-sasl packages, but that doesn't seem 
like a good idea.  What's the correct way of fixing this?

I should note that I built Subversion myself, so if I need to rebuild 
with some different config options to disable this behavior, I can do so.

++thanks,
trent...

Re: svnserve errors in the system logs

[Philip Martin <ph...@wandisco.com>]

Trent Fisher <tr...@oracle.com> writes:

> I just discovered tons of spam in /var/log/messages on one of my
> servers (Linux RHEL 5.8 with Subversion 1.8.9) :
>
> Sep 17 06:30:41 adc4110305 svnserve: sql_select option missing
> Sep 17 06:30:41 adc4110305 svnserve: auxpropfunc error no mechanism available
> Sep 17 06:30:41 adc4110305 svnserve: auxpropfunc error invalid parameter supplied
>
> This error pops up everytime someone accesses a repository via
> svn+ssh.  It doesn't seem to hinder functionality.  I can reproduce
> this simply by running "ssh adc4110305 svnserve -t" (the error pops up
> before I can type anything).
>
> From what I have gathered from my internet searches, it sounds like
> Cyrus SASL is getting involved.  Though I don't understand why, as I
> thought the tunnel mode was supposed to use the pre-authenticated
> username.  I tried messing with /etc/sasl2/svn.conf but only managed
> to make it worse.  One person suggested (on this very mailing list 5
> years ago) removing the relevant cyrus-sasl packages, but that doesn't
> seem like a good idea.  What's the correct way of fixing this?
>
> I should note that I built Subversion myself, so if I need to rebuild
> with some different config options to disable this behavior, I can do
> so.

That error comes from the SASL library when it loads the SQL plugin and
then finds that SASL has not been configured to use SQL.  At present
svnserve calls sasl_server_init() at startup and I suppose we could
delay the call until we know that SASL is required, but the problem
would still occur when a repository used SASL.  There may be a way to
tell SASL not to load the SQL plugin but I have not been able to find
it.  I avoid installing the libsasl2-modules-sql package on my system.

You can build Subversion using --without-sasl.

-- 
Philip Martin | Subversion Committer
WANdisco // *Non-Stop Data*