Question

I’m pretty new to SVN and it’s been driving me crazy! Here’s the basic problem:

I’ve working on a site that allows users to upload source code. In a subdirectory called “submissions” all the uploads are stored. While the webserver has write permission to the submissions, I do not. I’m using SVN for version control on my php and text files, but it keeps getting locked. If possible, I’d like SVN to keep an archive of uploaded submissions, and I don’t mind it being unable to revert them due to file permissions.

The problem is SVN keeps locking, it tells me to cleanup, cleanup tells me that “submissions” isn’t a working copy directory and I’m not allowed to commit changes, remove files or do anything else in my normal workflow. Any suggestions?

[mark@srv-web1 ~]$ svn commit -m "added report"
svn: Working copy '/var/www/sites/testPortal' locked
svn: run 'svn cleanup' to remove locks (type 'svn help cleanup' for details)
[mark@srv-web1 ~]$ svn cleanup
svn: 'submissions' is not a working copy directory
[mark@srv-web1 ~]$ svn remove submissions
svn: Working copy '.' locked
svn: run 'svn cleanup' to remove locks (type 'svn help cleanup' for details)
[mark@srv-web1 ~]$ ls -la submissions
total 32
drwxrwxrwx  7 nginx nginx 4096 Aug  4 03:22 .
drwxrwxrwx 10 root  root  4096 Aug  5 01:36 ..
drwxr-xr-x  2 nginx nginx 4096 Aug  4 00:04 114
drwxr-xr-x  2 nginx nginx 4096 Aug  4 02:10 116
drwxr-xr-x  2 nginx nginx 4096 Aug  4 02:40 117
drwxr-xr-x  2 nginx nginx 4096 Aug  4 02:15 118
drwxr-xr-x  2 nginx nginx 4096 Aug  4 03:22 119
-rw-r--r--  1 nginx nginx    1 Aug  4 01:51 uploads.txt

Answer 1

Probably the simplest is to chgrp all those files to a group you are in, then change the permissions to give yourself write access (g+w). Use permission 2775 for the directory, it will add the group sticky bit, so all files created in that directory will have the group of the directory – even if the creator (nginx in this case) is not in that group.