Question

I installed SVN on a Windows 2008 server, everything works like it should, except that everybody knowing the structure and the server IP can check stuff out. How do I protect the SVN content? I am using TortoiseSVN as client. Do I use the authz file for that?

Thanks!

Answer 1

authz is for apache-hosted subversion. You need to create a users file in your repository’s conf directory with user = password pairs and then reference it from your svnserve.conf file. From the online book:

Create a users file and realm

For now, the [general] section of svnserve.conf has all the variables you need. Begin by > changing the values of those variables: choose a name for a file that will contain your > usernames and passwords and choose an authentication realm:

[general]
password-db = userfile
realm = example realm

The realm is a name that you define. It tells clients which sort of “authentication namespace” they’re connecting to; the Subversion client displays it in the authentication prompt and uses it as a key (along with the server’s hostname and port) for caching credentials on disk (see the section called “Caching credentials”). The password-db variable points to a separate file that contains a list of usernames and passwords, using the same familiar format. For example:

[users]
harry = foopassword
sally = barpassword