SVN over SSH

Disclaimer: might only be interesting to SVN users

I use SVN for my personal documents, research and teaching material. I finally got around to configure the server in what I expect to be a secure and usuable setup for multiple users. In particular, I am now using SSH for authentication, without giving users a shell or requiring software like apache to be installed. The setup is super easy, and I would like to thank this blog for the detailed and helpful instructions. In the end, you just create SSH public/private keys for your SVN users, add an additional dummy linux user, set up the keys in that user’s SSH config in a specific way, and create corresponding SVN users with dummy passwords. Then, everything works out of the box. Way better than going with plain SVN or using monsters like apache. It only took 10 years to realize that this is possible 😉