Re: strange error with subversion: "client denied by server configuration: /htdocs"

Hi all,

Andrey Repin wrote:
> Look for Allow/Deny directives in httpd.conf prior Virtualhost
> definition, or
> add one
> Allow from all
> to your Subversion virtualhost.
>

I tried adding Allow/Deny directives, but this doesn't seem to fix the
problem either.

jpye_at_ascend:~$ svn co
http://ascendsvn.cheme.cmu.edu/ascend/code/trunk/solvers/ test21
svn: PROPFIND request failed on '/ascend/code/trunk/solvers'
svn: PROPFIND of '/ascend/code/trunk/solvers': 403 Forbidden
(http://ascendsvn.cheme.cmu.edu)

And in my /var/log/apache2/svn-error.log:

[Mon May 18 20:39:47 2009] [error] [client 128.2.52.249] client denied
by server configuration: /var/www/svn/ascend

My questions are:

   1. Have I done the 'Allow from all' thing correctly? (see below)
   2. Why does this only fail for *SOME* clients, not for all of them?
      Does the PROPFIND request (which is failing) get issued only
      sometimes, not always? What is the PROPFIND looking for?
   3. How am I getting a 403 error here if I haven't placed any access
      restrictions in place?
   4. Why does the 403 error result in a message about a subdirectory of
      DocumentRoot (/var/www/svn/ascend), rather than an error about
      files within /home/svn (/home/svn/ascend)?
   5. Why does everything work fine when I view from a web browser eg
      firefox but not when I access with subversion clients from *some*
      machines.
   6. Could it be that I should switch to using /var/svn instead of
      /home/svn?
   7. Problems have only appeared with this recently... why would that be?
   8. We recently did some fairly major "svn mv" operations... could
      they cause this kind of problem?

I think that the key to this problem is understanding why it fails only
on SOME machines AND NOT ALL.

Any more suggestions?

Below is my current /etc/apache2/sites-available/svn, which I have
changed to use SVNParentPath, but with no change to the error message:

Cheers
JP

-----

<VirtualHost *:80>
        ServerAdmin john.pye_at_anu.edu.au
        ServerName ascendsvn.cheme.cmu.edu

        DocumentRoot /var/www/svn

        # Possible values include: debug, info, notice, warn, error, crit,
        # alert, emerg.
        LogLevel debug
        ErrorLog /var/log/apache2/svn-error.log

        RedirectMatch ^/stats/?$ http://ascend.cheme.cmu.edu/awstats/awstats.pl?config=ascendsvn.cheme.cmu.edu

        #RedirectMatch permanent ^/$ /ascend

        CustomLog /var/log/apache2/svn.log combined
        ServerSignature On

        <Location />
                DAV svn
                SVNParentPath /home/svn
                Order Allow,Deny
                Allow from all
        </Location>

        <Location /ascend>

                AuthType Basic
                AuthName "Subversion Repository"
                AuthUserFile /etc/apache2/dav_svn.passwd

                # Uncomment the following line to enable Authz Authentication
                # AuthzSVNAccessFile /etc/apache2/dav_svn.authz

                # The following three lines allow anonymous read, but make
                # committers authenticate themselves.
                <LimitExcept GET PROPFIND OPTIONS REPORT>
                        Require valid-user
                </LimitExcept>

        </Location>

        <Location /private>
                DAV svn
                SVNPath /home/svn/private
                AuthType "Basic"
                AuthName "Subversion Repository"
                AuthUserFile /etc/apache2/dav_svn.passwd
                AuthzSVNAccessFile /etc/apache2/dav_svn.authz
                Require valid-user
        </Location>

</VirtualHost>

-----

-- 
Dr John Pye
Dept of Engineering
Australian National University
------------------------------------------------------
http://subversion.tigris.org/ds/viewMessage.do?dsForumId=1065&dsMessageId=2305146
To unsubscribe from this discussion, e-mail: [users-unsubscribe_at_subversion.tigris.org].