Blue Screen Of Duds

The trick is to go for the simplest configuration possible, my installation was done on a RedHat 2.6.9-5.EL kernel.

My set up involved getting up an Apache instance (version 2.2.0) running on port 8081 serving only Subversion (version 1.2.3) repositories.

Get Lighthttpd running on port 80 proxying requests to /svn to port 8081 on localhost. The same can be done with a public facing server with proper security measures added in.

First install Apache:

./configure --enable-mods-shared=most --prefix=/usr/local/svnhttpd

make && make install

Install Subversion

./configure --with-apxs=/usr/local/svnhttpd/bin/apxs --prefix=/usr/local/subversion --with-apr=/usr/local/svnhttpd/bin/apr-1-config --with-apr-util=/usr/local/svnhttpd/bin/apu-1-config

install && make install

(note: if you don’t use the with apr and with apr util flags to the Apache ones, the server will throw up an error, which I figured out due to this post.)

Edit httpd.conf to make it run on the port you want to run it and add the dav handler for the SVN location.

Listen 8081
DocumentRoot "/data/svn/repository"

     Dav svn
     SVNParentPath /data/svn/repository
     Order allow,deny
     Allow from all
     
        Order deny,allow
        Deny from all
        Satisfy all
     

Start up Apache and you are ready to go!

Next up is Trac, which I will try to install tomorrow.

Thursdays surely must be Subversion day for me. I am giving installing Subversion and Apache to go with it for the umpteenth time, since we badly require a source control/versioning system to be in place. Both the front end code and back end code for any media site rapidly grows out of control and even with just 120 days of existence online we are rapidly hitting that region where nobody has any clue what changes were made by anyone or who has the latest and hottest version available anywhere.

That said, there is still no simple and surefire way to install a basic Subversion & Apache install anywhere. The *nixes being what they are with their inconsistent layouts, predictable behaviour is a luxury that is not there and while I have managed to get one or either working at different times, I have never managed a set up that works precisely in the way that I want it to.

And TortoiseSVN with its lovely error messages does not make matters any better. Back to ./configure land again.

I am giving the Performancing extension for Firefox another spin, driven by the fact that I want something easy to post to this new blog and nothing else really worked. Wbloggar is an old friend, but I did not want to run another application just to be able to blog. I have really sold my soul to Firefox. Sob.

Another reason is the fact that they have blocked access to all the Blogspot and Blogger domains and subdomains for reasons that are now widely known, at least in the media circles of India. So it is now a combination of Bloglines and GreatNews all over again and the nightmares of keeping the feeds synced. Yes, the sysadmins do know that I blog and so on, one of the perks of being an eccentric geek, I guess.