failed commit that did not fail

I got this error on a commit because the rep-cache.db file in the
repository had the wrong mode:
....
Transmitting file data
................................................................
.......................................................................................
.......................................................................................
.......................................................................................
.......................................................................................
.......................................................................................
.......................................................................................
............................svn: Commit failed (details follow):
svn: attempt to write a readonly database
svn: attempt to write a readonly database

Clearly, it says the commit failed. So I fixed the permissions in the
repository and tried the commit again:
....
svn: Commit failed (details follow):
svn: File already exists: filesystem '/svnroot/myrepo/db', transaction
'5323-43v', path '/blah/blah/blah'

So I seem to be stuck. I run svn update in my working copy and
nothing seems to happen. svn status still shows all my added files
staged and ready to be committed. the commit did not fail correctly.
So, what do I do to get out of this besides dumping up to right before
the current rev and reloading the repository? Also, is this a known
issue or shall I file a bug?

Subversion command-line client, version 1.6.15.
server is running 1.6.13, both are Linux.

--
Mark