Whompbox

This quick article explains how to get the subversion (SVN) daemon, svnserve, to start everytime your server restarts.

Motivation

We’re currently moving all of our repositories to a brand new, purpose built development server. In an attempt to do everything right from the start, this particular task was on my to-do list. Everytime the old server was restarted, I had to go in and start the subversion server manually. This script does away with that.

How?

Download the startup script and copy it to the /etc/init.d/ folder. You will need superuser access for this. (Either sign in as root, or type sudo before each of the commands). This can be done in the terminal:

$ cd /etc/init.d/
$ wget http://www.whompbox.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/07/svnserve


Next you want to make the script executable:

$ chmod +x svnserve

Now add it to the startup sequence:

$ update-rc.d svnserve defaults

Now you should configure the few things in the script which are specific to you. These can be found at the top of the file. The two that you are most likely to change are

SVN_ROOT_PATH
SVNUSER


which tell the scripts where your repositories are on the system and what username you want the daemon to run under.

Finally:

$ /etc/init.d/svnserve start

to start the server.

Resources

svnserve startup script

Your Thoughts

Comments, questions and suggestions are always welcome. Just leave a comment.

— Martin McNickle