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Access Control for Subversion with Apache2 and Authz

My group project at University now consists of three smaller projects that provide an overall RSS service. I want to let the guys work on these, while still letting me keep my other coursework jut accessible to me. At the moment, I just have basic http authentication set-up which isn’t so great for pulling off what I want.

Please welcome on stage the Apache2 mod, authz_svn…

If you followed my other howto, you’ll have all the pre-requisites for this.

First of all, we need to create an Access Control file.

sudo nano /etc/apache2/svn_access_control

In this file, you’ll want to put some rules. I’ll first of all go over these and then provide some examples.

Permissions

There are only two types of permission:

  • Read only - r - a user can check-out a copy of a project.
  • Read and Write - rw - a user can check-out and commit changes to a project.

Users

These are the same usernames that you have set in your password file that you created in the previous howto. You can always add more users to this file using:

sudo htpasswd2 -m /etc/apache2/dav_svn.passwd bill

When prompted, enter the password for the user.

Repository Location

You specify the above rules in certain locations for the repository. These go between square brackets.

[/]

The above will specify rules for the root of the repository.

[/wowapp/trunk]

The above will specify rules for a project named ‘wowapp’ in the trunk location.

User Groups

You can create groups of users and then use those for rules. You do this under a special heading in square brackets:

[groups]
mygroup = dave, mike

This will create a group called ‘mygroup’ which ‘dave’ and ‘mike’ belongs to.

And now for some examples.

Examples

[groups]
team = bob, bill
devteam = bob, barry, brett

[/]
@team = r
bob = rw

[/wowapp/trunk]
@team = r
@devteam = rw
brenda = rw

In this example:

  • Created a group team which has two members; bob and bill.
  • Created another group, called devteam which has three members; bob, barry, brett.
  • In the root of the repository, I’ve given the group team read permissions.
  • Also, in the root, bob has read and write permissions.
  • In the trunk of wowapp, the group team has read permission.
  • Also, the devteam group has read and write permissions.
  • And another user, called brenda has read and write permissions.

Once you’ve created your desired access controll file, save the changes in nano by hitting CTRL O, hit enter to save the name, then CTRL X to quit Nano.

We just need to now link this access control file with our Subversion set-up.

sudo nano /etc/apache2/mods-enabled/dav_svn.conf

Here’s the example from the previous how-to:

<Location /svn>
  DAV svn
  SVNPath /home/svn

  AuthType Basic
  AuthName "Subversion Repository"
  AuthUserFile /etc/apache2/dav_svn.passwd
  Require valid-user
</Location>

All you need to add is the following line:

AuthzSVNAccessFile /etc/apache2/svn_access_control

So that the file looks like this:

<Location /svn>
  DAV svn
  SVNPath /home/svn

  AuthType Basic
  AuthName "Subversion Repository"
  AuthUserFile /etc/apache2/dav_svn.passwd

  AuthzSVNAccessFile /etc/apache2/svn_access_control

  Require valid-user
</Location>

Save the file, and then restart Apache2:

sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 restart

You should now have access control working for Subversion over Apache2.