On Wed, Dec 04, 2013 at 03:02:10PM -0800, John wrote:
> After many hours of apparently pointless googling, I hope to get an answer
> here.
>
> I asked a question on unix.stackexchange.com which essentially outlines my
> problem: http://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/103714/svn-failing-to-create-sasl-context
>
> Here is the text of that question:
>
> --------------
>
> Trying to execute the command
>
> |svn log svn://[my server address]/path/to/repository
> |
>
> nets me the following:
>
> |svn: E170001: Unable to connect to a repository at URL 'svn://[my server address]/path/to/repository'
> svn: E170001: Could not create SASL context: generic failure
> |
>
> Some quick googling reveals a possiblesolution
> <http://forums.cpanel.net/f34/how-do-i-enable-port-linux-38362.html>:
>
> |sudo port activate cyrus-sasl2 @2.1.23_3+kerberos
> |
>
> However, before I attempt this, I would like to know a couple things.
>
> 1. What exactly is going on?
> 2. What does this command do? How does it fix the problem?
>
> ------------------------
>
> As some additional info, I am not using SASL on my server- as far as I am
> aware, anyway. The output of "svnserve --version" on the server shows this:
> _________________
>
> svnserve, version 1.6.17 (r1128011)
> compiled Jun 26 2013, 20:44:36
>
> Copyright (C) 2000-2009 CollabNet.
> Subversion is open source software, see http://subversion.apache.org/
> This product includes software developed by CollabNet
> (http://www.Collab.Net/).
>
> The following repository back-end (FS) modules are available:
>
> * fs_base : Module for working with a Berkeley DB repository.
> * fs_fs : Module for working with a plain file (FSFS) repository.
>
> Cyrus SASL authentication is available.
> ____________________
>
> The output of running "svn --version" on my client gets this:
>
> ____________________
>
> svn, version 1.7.9 (r1462340)
> compiled Apr 6 2013, 21:23:46
>
> Copyright (C) 2013 The Apache Software Foundation.
> This software consists of contributions made by many people; see the NOTICE
> file for more information.
> Subversion is open source software, see http://subversion.apache.org/
>
> The following repository access (RA) modules are available:
>
> * ra_neon : Module for accessing a repository via WebDAV protocol using
> Neon.
> - handles 'http' scheme
> - handles 'https' scheme
> * ra_svn : Module for accessing a repository using the svn network protocol.
> - with Cyrus SASL authentication
> - handles 'svn' scheme
> * ra_local : Module for accessing a repository on local disk.
> - handles 'file' scheme
> * ra_serf : Module for accessing a repository via WebDAV protocol using
> serf.
> - handles 'http' scheme
> - handles 'https' scheme
> __________________________
>
> Oddly, I can successfully use that command ("svn log svn://[my server
> address]/path/to/repository") on another client computer without any
> trouble.
>
> I have no idea where exactly to look to find the source of this problem, or
> what precisely is causing it. Help is greatly appreciated.
>
> -Cheers,
> John
I believe this is a problem with the Cyrus SASL installation on the
client side. I cannot tell you specifics because I don't know all
the possible failure modes of Cyrus SASL.
I do know that users were hitting this problem some time ago on OpenBSD,
after .la files were removed from the cyrus-sasl package. This prevented
newly compiled Subversion binaries from properly linking to the SASL
libraries, which resulted in the error message you are seeing. However,
this error message could be generated for a number of reasons.
Did you compile the svn client and dependencies yourself, or are
you using binaries provided by some vendor? In the former case,
please try a binary package and check if the problem persists.
See http://subversion.apache.org/packages.html
In the latter case, it might be worth raising this issue with the vendor.
Your best bets for diagnosing the issue yourself are to strace the svn
process and study the output for errors related to SASL, or to run the
svn process in gdb with a breakpoint set to the piece of code in SASL
that raises the error and infer the reason why it's failing to initialise.
Received on 2013-12-05 14:35:51 CET