HELP! Can't commit anymore: svn: PROPFIND ... Service Unavailable

Hi!

I am working on a slightly outdated OpenSuSE system that has
subversion 1.4.4 installed.
Since an hour or so, I can't do any commits anymore. Everything else
seems to work, but no commits.

I even checked out a fresh working copy with

svn co http://localhost/svn/meinefc/branches/RELEASE-BETA test

which worked, but all I get on commit is:

Hinzufügen meinefc/test.txt
svn: Übertragen fehlgeschlagen (Details folgen):
svn: PROPFIND Anfrage fehlgeschlagen auf
»/svn/meinefc/branches/RELEASE-BETA/sites/all/modules/meinefc/test.txt«
svn: PROPFIND von
»/svn/meinefc/branches/RELEASE-BETA/sites/all/modules/meinefc/test.txt«:
503 Service unavailable (http://localhost)
svn: Ihre Logmeldung wurde in einer Temporärdatei abgelegt:
svn: '/home/koellpe/test/sites/all/modules/svn-commit.tmp'

Everything else works. checkout, update, access but no commit!
I have restarted apache, and I don't see any error
messages. Everything worked until an hour ago, there were no
configuration changes.

There are no log messages, no further error messages, no verbose
messages, no debug messages.

Does anybody have any idea how to solve this? This is extremely
urgent, since I am in the middle of a very complicated product
update and had to put the web site offline until finishing this update
operation

-- 
peter koellner <peter_at_asgalon.net>