How to make Subversion use Linux system accounts for authentication?

I've set up a Ubuntu Server for Subversion with Apache/WebDAV interface to share repositories with other developers. My question is, how can I make Subversion use the linux system accounts for authentication? This would lead to very easy Subversion account management. Subversion with Apache/WebDAV is currently working with this configuration:

Contents of /etc/apache2/mods-available/dav_svn.conf:

<Location /svn>
  DAV svn
  SVNParentPath /home/svn
  SVNListParentPath On
  AuthType Basic
  AuthName "Subversion Repository"
  AuthUserFile /etc/apache2/dav_svn.passwd
  Require valid-user
</Location>

I have tried changing AuthUserFile /etc/apache2/dav_svn.passwd with AuthUserFile /etc/shadow with no success. This makes the server to respond with a error 500 internal server error. It's logical, why the Web service should have access to system authentication file?

Thanks a lot in advance!

Ok! I did it! And I thought it would be very hard to find the answer!

We have to tell Apache to use an "external authentication provider", Apache won't be checking for authentication, but will delegate the task to an external authenticator, in this case, the marvellous pwauth.

So the steps I did to make it work was:

Install Mod_Auth_External module for Apache2 and pwauth

sudo apt-get install libapache2-mod-authnz-external pwauth

Enabled the new module for Apache: sudo a2enmod authnz_external in terminal.
Configured my apache.conf (or you may have httpd.conf) to add the external authenticator (based on this article):
```
AddExternalAuth pwauth /usr/local/libexec/pwauth
SetExternalAuthMethod pwauth pipe
```

Edited my /etc/apache2/mods-available/dav_svn.conf to set the new external auth provider:

...
AuthType Basic
AuthName "Subversion Repository"
AuthBasicProvider external
AuthExternal pwauth
Require valid-user
...

Tested and worked fine!

Couldn't you use ssh to access subversion repositories instead of WebDAV?

svn checkout svn+ssh://user@server:/home/svn/repository/trunk

I can't comment yet, but wanted to add that in Ubuntu 12.04 the path of pwauth has changed so now this should be

AddExternalAuth pwauth /usr/sbin/pwauth
SetExternalAuthMethod pwauth pipe

and this can be conveniently placed in a separate file inside etc/apache2/conf.d

来源：https://stackoverflow.com/questions/4522941/how-to-make-subversion-use-linux-system-accounts-for-authentication

标签

svn

apache2

webdav