apache locks up db?

A colleague tried to incorporate changes from one database into another using
commands of the form

svn merge -r 14269:HEAD https://localhost/svn/private/presales/trunk presales

which was carried out in trunk checked out from

https://localhost/svn/private_new/trunk

the repository paths of the changed and to be changed files are obviously very
different

ie https://localhost/svn/private/presales/trunk vs
https://localhost/svn/private_new/trunk/presales, but he claimed that this would
work. The above commands all appeared to work and did modify the working dir,
but when we tried to commit this change it failed with strange error messages,
but worse after retrying we found we had locked the database out even to
recover. Restarting apache worked and allowed the svnadmin recover to work.

However, this makes me worried that apache may not be the safest way to access
svn. My boss wants to use https/http as he feels that will allow clients with
firewalls access etc etc. Do other svn'ers have experience on this sort of
problem? Do the svn modules manage svn databases as long running processes?

-- 
Robin Becker
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