How reliable is svadmin verify?

Hello,

I had to deal with a server crash the last days and had to restore our
repositories from some days old backups it seemed that we partly
backed up somehow corrupted data. I used svnadmin verify to check the
repositories during my repairs and found, that different versions of
svnadmin behave differently in verification. Our production server
runs Subversion 1.4.x, on my notebook I used version 1.6.x. I found
one repository where svnadmin verify with version 1.6.x didn't find
any errors, but a svnadmin dump did. Regarding the docs verify is just
dump with no output, therefore I would have expected the same results.
Another interesting thing is that Subversion 1.4.x on our server found
the problems svnadmin dump did on 1.6.x even with svnadmin verify,
like I would have expected to be the case with 1.6.x either.

Does anyone have an idea how this can happen? I wrote a tool to verify
our repositories on a scheduled time and it can verify using verify
and dump, therefore I would like to know which one to use. When we
upgrade to Subversion 1.6.x on the server, should I switch from using
verify to dump? Should both produce the same errors? Are there any
errors both wouldn't be able to detect?

Thanks in advance!

Mit freundlichen Grüßen,

Thorsten Schöning

-- 
Thorsten Schöning
AM-SoFT IT-Systeme - Hameln | Potsdam | Leipzig
 
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