Linux – “Could not open the requested SVN filesystem” after copying the repo-files to an other server

linuxsvn

My old subversion server (Fedora 10, Apache with mod_dav_svn) crashed and the only thing I have is a backup of the filesystem.

I've configured the new server (now CentOS 5) exactly the same way and copied the files from the backup, but I get this error: "Could not open the requested SVN filesystem"
(New repositories are working…)

What could I try to get the repositories working again?

Best Answer

Unfortunately CentOS 5's subversion is quite old, 1.4.2, whereas Fedora 10's is newer, 1.5.4. The fsfs format must have changed between the two (look for a version file in the repository directory) and your older subversion on CentOS can't read the newer version generated on 1.5.4.

You have two options:

  1. Install a temporary copy of 1.5.4 or later (or e.g. set up a Fedora 10 VM to use the copy there), use svnadmin dump from 1.5.4 to back up the repository then load this into a new repository using svnadmin load with the 1.4.2 tools. This may be slow, and you'll also have to copy over any hooks etc. You'll also lose the server-side support for svn:mergeinfo attributes.

  2. Install a newer version of subversion on your machine. You can either build this yourself - getting a Fedora SRPM is a good start, although it will usually need a few fix-ups - or you can set up your system to update from RPMForge, either in its entirety or just for subversion and its dependencies - and install their up-to-date builds of 1.6.x. You'll get all the improvements of 1.6 and keep the svn:mergeinfo attribute support, but you'll no longer have a strictly-RHEL-5-compatible system (if you're bothered about that). For future note: as in the discussion below you must restart apache, e.g. /sbin/service httpd restart, after updating the installed subversion.

Good luck!

Related Topic