Re: [TSVN] TortoiseSVN repeatedly prompts for authentication if user can not read root of repository

Max Spicer wrote:
> As from Tortoise 1.2.x, some our users who do not have read access to
> the root of the repository are asked for their username and password 3
> times for every session they start in TortoiseSVN, regardless of whether
> they tell it to store their passwords. This behaviour was not present
> in the 1.1 branch (including 1.1.7) and is still present in yesterday's
> nightly build. The users that it effects have been denied access to the
> root of the repository, but granted access to the level which they are
> trying to access. Users are running a combination of XP Pro and 2000.

That's expected, and there's not much I can do about it without getting
rid of a feature. I try to explain what's going on:

The repository browser since version 1.2 also shows the locks (who has
locked a file). To do that, TortoiseSVN has to fetch the locks
recursively from the repository root.
Now, whenever you start up the repository browser, the locks are fetched
from that repository root. And since your users don't have read access
there, they get asked for their username/password three times before
Subversion gives up trying. Saving the auth info doesn't help because
Apache rejects any username/password because they don't have read access.

Unfortunately, there's no way finding out if a user just entered the
auth data wrong or if he doesn't have read access there.

Sure, TSVN could ask for the locking information every time a folder
gets expanded, but that would take more time than necessary. You see,
getting the locks recursively once takes not much more time than
fetching the locks for just one directory, so that's why TSVN fetches
them from the repository root at startup *once*.

As a workaround, you could give all users read access to the repository
root (you can reject read access to some subfolders - I don't think you
have important files in the repository root?).

Also note that the revision graph won't work either if you don't have
read access to the repo root.

If you can't do that (or if you don't want to), then you have to wait
until Subversion 1.3 gets out:
http://subversion.tigris.org/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=2291

Stefan

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