In this tutorial we will show you how to install Apache Subversion on your Debian 9. For those of you who didn’t know, For those of you who didn’t know, Apache Subversion is an open source version control system. It helps you keep track of a collection of files and folders. Any time you change, add or delete a file or folder that you manage with Subversion, you commit these changes to your Subversion repository, which creates a new revision in your repository reflecting these changes. You can always go back, look at and get the contents of previous revisions. SVN supports several protocols for network access: SVN, SVN+SSH, HTTP, HTTPS. If you are behind a firewall, HTTP-based Subversion is advantageous since SVN traffic will go through the firewall without any additional firewall rule setting.
This article assumes you have at least basic knowledge of Linux, know how to use the shell, and most importantly, you host your site on your own VPS. The installation is quite simple and assumes you are running in the root account, if not you may need to add ‘sudo’ to the commands to get root privileges. I will show you through the step by step installation Apache Subversion (SVN) on a Debian 9 (Stretch) server.
Install Apache Subversion on Debian 9 Stretch
Step 1. Before we install any software, it’s important to make sure your system is up to date by running these following apt-get commands in the terminal:
1 2 | apt-getupdate apt-getupgrade |
Step 2. Installing Apache web server.
First you need to install Apache web server to access svn server using http urls:
1 | apt-getinstallapache2apache2-utils |
You can issue the following command to install the Apache subversion.
1 2 3 | apt-getinstallsubversionsubversion-toolslibapache2-mod-svn a2enmoddav a2enmoddav_svn |
Subversion Apache module package creates an configuration file /etc/apache2/mods-enabled/dav_svn.conf. You just need to make necessary changes to it:
1 | nano/etc/apache2/mods-enabled/dav_svn.conf |
Place the following content:
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 | Alias/svn/var/lib/svn <Location/svn> DAVsvn SVNParentPath/var/lib/svn AuthTypeBasic AuthName"Subversion Repository" AuthUserFile/etc/apache2/dav_svn.passwd </Location> |
After making above changes, restart Apache service:
1 | systemctlrestartapache2 |
Create your first svn repository named myrepo, You can use any suitable name:
1 2 3 4 | mkdir-p/var/lib/svn/ svnadmincreate/var/lib/svn/myrepo chown-Rwww-data:www-data/var/lib/svn chmod-R775/var/lib/sv |
Following commands will add two users for svn. It will prompt for users password to be assigned.
1 2 | htpasswd-m/etc/apache2/dav_svn.passwdchedelics htpasswd-m/etc/apache2/dav_svn.passwdidroot |
Let’s restart Apache service again:
1 | systemctlrestartapache2 |
Subversion will be available on HTTP port 80 by default. Open your favorite browser and navigate to http://yourdomain.com/svn/myrepo/ or http://server-ip/svn/myrepo/ and will prompt for authentication. Use login credentials created in Step 6. If you are using a firewall, please open port 80 to enable access to the control panel.
Congratulation’s! You have successfully installed Apache Subversion. Thanks for using this tutorial for installing the latest version of Apache Subversion (SVN) on Debian 9 Stretch server. For additional help or useful information, we recommend you to check the official Apache Subversion web site.
