I've had enough dealing with permission errors and corrupted database issues in the Subversion repository I use in one of my development servers. Most problems came from using the default Berkeley database as my repository store so I decided to move to FSFS.
Even if the Subversion book has a section explaining how to setup users and permissions and create wrapper scripts to use the correct umask, I didn't feel safe running a repository store that even the Subversion development team perceives as very sensible to interruptions.
Some advantages of FSFS over Berkeley database include:
- Can be used from a read only mount and doesn't depend on umask settings
- It's platform independent
- Repository size is slightly smaller
- It can be used on network filesystems
- Quite insensitive to interruptions
So, I've created a new repository specifying FSFS. You just need to add the --fs-type fsfs parameter, like this:
$ svnadmin create --fs-type fsfs /path/to/repos
I'd recommend not wasting your time with Berkeley database for your Subversion setup, just go for FSFS and you'll be cool.
More about Subversion and how I use it on all my web projects coming soon.
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It's "FSFS" not "FSF".
Typo in your title.
Good catch!
Fixed. Thank you for letting me know :)
Alexis Bellido
FSFS is default these days
Just FYI, you don't need to bother specifying the --fs-type option if you want to use FSFS. It's been the default repository type for several versions now (since 1.2 or 1.1, I think).
Right, my problems were with older SVN
I'm using a CentOS box with SVN 1.1.4, at that time svn used to have BSD as default.
Thanks for your comment.
Alexis Bellido