svn 1.2 -> 1.4 upgrade access denied problem + solution

For once it seems like a nice idea to post a problem with a solution to
a news group....

I did a server upgrade of subversion from 1.2.1 to 1.4.2 (Debian Sarge).
We use fsfs, apache2 etc.

After the upgrade, checking a few Apache2 files etc, and restarting
Apache2, I could not access any of our repositories - 404 error.

Here's what the Apache error log said:

[Mon Jan 15 00:33:47 2007] [error] [client x.x.x.x] Failed to load the
AuthzSVNAccessFile: An authz rule refers to group '@aaa-bbb-ccc-ddd',
which is undefined

In the above, the aaa-bbb-ccc-ddd is the name of an access group in our
/etc/subversion/access-control file. It turns out that until now, where
the group is referenced later in the file, there was a spelling error.
IN subversion 1.2 (specifically the authz module) this error was
silently ignored, without affecting the other authorisation rule
processing, but in 1.4 it obviously isn't, and the result is that the
access file fails to load, and consequently no access at all is allowed.

I don't know if this is a bug, feature, or what, but I imagine we are
not the only ones with slight typos in our access-control rules file, so
if any others have similar problems it may be worth checking for the
problem described here.

Once I fixed the file, everything seems to function normally. Fine work
as usual by the developers & thanks for making the rest of our lives easier.

- thomas beale

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Received on Mon Jan 15 00:51:21 2007