If you are searching for a way to get Subversion working over SSH but just… can’t… quite… get there, this should help you out. These instructions should work for any *NIX system. I’m writing them for Mac OS X. I’ll assume you already have a Subversion server set up somewhere and that you already have an account with SSH access to that server.

1. Install svn client

   You can get it from the Subverion site or snag the Mac Subversion DMG if that’s what you need.

2. Add paths

   Now that you’ve got the client installed, we need to add it to our path so that the shell knows where to find it. If you compiled it from source and put it somewhere else, you should substitute that location here. (or maybe you put it in a place that’s already in your path so that you wouldn’t HAVE to do this step?)
   If you’re using tcsh:

   setenv PATH "${PATH}:/usr/local/bin"

   If you’re using bash:

   export PATH=${PATH}:/usr/local/bin

3. Modify SSH config

   If you’re connecting with non-standard options, such as a different username or a different port, you might wish to modify ~/.ssh/config so that you don’t have to type them every time, which makes things much easier. (For more information on the options you can put here, see Getting Started with SSH or check out the man pages for ssh and sshd)

   		Host hostname
   		User username
   		Port otherport

4. Set up SSH keys

   We set up keys so that you don’t have to type your password every single time you do anything. First we need to generate the key:

   ssh-keygen -t dsa -f ~/.ssh/id_dsa -C "Comment about this key, perhaps a descriptive title?"

   Then we need to upload that key to the server you’re trying to connect to:

   cat ~/.ssh/id_dsa.pub | ssh hostname 'cat - >> ~/.ssh/authorized_keys'

5. Configure ssh-agent

   Now we configure ssh-agent to automatically send that there key which we just created and authorized whenever it needs to connect. This is the part that keeps you from having to type your password every time.
   If you’re using tcsh, you need to modify ~/.login:

   set sshAgent=/usr/bin/ssh-agent
   set sshAgentArgs="-c"
   set tmpFile=~/.ssh/ssh-agent-info
   
       #
       #  Check for existing ssh-agent process
       #
       if ( -s $tmpFile ) source $tmpFile
       if ( $?SSH_AGENT_PID ) then
         set this=`ps -elf | grep ${SSH_AGENT_PID} | grep ssh-agent > /dev/null`
         # start ssh-agent if status is nonzero
         if (( $? != 0 ) && ( -x "$sshAgent" )) then
           $sshAgent $sshAgentArgs | head -2 > $tmpFile
           source $tmpFile
           echo "ssh agent started [${SSH_AGENT_PID}]"
           ssh-add
         endif
       endif

   If you’re using bash, you need to modify ~/.profile:

   SSH_ENV=$HOME/.ssh/environment
   
   function start_agent {
        echo "Initialising new SSH agent..."
        /usr/bin/ssh-agent | sed 's/^echo/#echo/' > ${SSH_ENV}
        echo succeeded
        chmod 600 ${SSH_ENV}
        . ${SSH_ENV} > /dev/null
        /usr/bin/ssh-add;
   }
   
   # Source SSH settings, if applicable
   
   if [ -f "${SSH_ENV}" ]; then
        . ${SSH_ENV} > /dev/null
        #ps ${SSH_AGENT_PID} doesn’t work under cywgin
        ps -ef | grep ${SSH_AGENT_PID} | grep ssh- agent$ > /dev/null || {
            start_agent;
        }
   else
        start_agent;
   fi

6. Test

   After editing one of the above files, you probably need to log out and back in so that it will run and set up ssh-agent. Then test the connection to your Subverison server:

   svn list svn+ssh://path/to/repos
   

   If that works, you’re good to go!

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 5th, 2006 at 3:18 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.