svn: "Can't set position pointer in file"

BrianK · 11-06-2007, 10:58 PM

I've just built an svn server that works with apache & Berkely DB, but when I try to do a simple svn ls, I get the following message:

Code:

svn ls http://localhost:8080/svn/repos
svn: PROPFIND request failed on '/svn/repos'
svn: Can't set position pointer in file '/local/svn/repository/db/revs/0': Invalid argument

My apache error log looks like:

Code:

[Tue Nov 06 19:51:05 2007] [error] [client 127.0.0.1] Could not fetch resource information.  [500, #0]
[Tue Nov 06 19:51:05 2007] [error] [client 127.0.0.1] Could not open the root of the repository  [500, #22]
[Tue Nov 06 19:51:05 2007] [error] [client 127.0.0.1] Can't set position pointer in file '/local/svn/repository/db/revs/0': Invalid argument  [500, #22]

I have a somewhat odd setup in that *everything* runs in my user space as me - apache, php, mysql, Berkely DB, svn, python, etc. etc. It all also runs in non-standard directories and apache has to use a non-standard port. Everything was built from source. (Not my decision, but the way it is).

I was careful to watch all the config messages to see that nothing errored out - everything during compile/setup seems right. Because everything is run as me, there are no write permissions errors (apache runs as me so it has the same read/write permissions I do).

I've googled around a bit for this error, but haven't found anything with a solution. Has anyone seen this error before? Any idea what it means or how to solve? I have all my config lines, all my config files - just let me know what you want to see if it will help.

BrianK · 11-07-2007, 04:35 PM

In case anyone else comes across this - in my case, it meant that I was using the wrong version of apr & apr-util. Apache 2.2.6 requires apr >= 1.2

I found this out by trying to recompile apache using the --with-apr=/some/path config option & it told me that it needed at least 1.2.

svn doesn't have this in their docs - they just mention 0.9 and 1.0

For the record, a recompile of apache was not necessary - simply link svn against the correct apr made svn-server & apache happy together.