Daniel:
As mentioned in my original mail, this is indeed a cache invalidation
problem reliant on the contents of ~/.subversion/auth, which is
trivially worked around by removing the contents thereof. The problem
I'm trying to raise is a lack of parity with the behavior of plain SVN,
which also handles the server challenge on commit poorly but in a less
obtrusive way. That is, in their case, --username takes precedence over
the contents of the cache.
In both cases, the lack of a descriptive error message is more
problematic than the lack of an automated fix for the problem. I have of
course raised the issue with SVN as well, such that if they add this
message, Git will also handle this issue more gracefully when the
changes are integrated through Perl SVN.
Thank you for your response,
- Tom Robinson
On 8/20/11 5:08 AM, Daniel Shahaf wrote:
Passing --username at checkout time is a no-op for HTTP-served
repositories that allow anonymous read access.
Seems that you have your username/password cached on the first box but
not on the second box?
In any case: rm -rf ~/.subversion/auth/svn.simple/ will remove the
locally-cached usernames/passwords. (Note for the archives: it won't
remove details associated with client certificates.) Or, alternatively,
pass --username to the 'svn commit' command too.
Does this address your issue?
Thomas Robinson wrote on Fri, Aug 19, 2011 at 14:06:40 -0700:
The following is a bug report for triage and review. I've been
unable to locate an adequate fix or discussion for this issue;
however, I have found an acceptable workaround.
When built on OSX, SVN versions 1.6.16 (r1073529) and 1.6.17
(r1128011) appear to handle authentication challenges on commit in a
non-robust manner.
The testing that follows is against a Google Code project that I
currently maintain code for, which may be found here:
http://code.google.com/p/rf-ace/
Here is a sparse log of a fresh checkout and commit using SVN
version 1.6.16 (r1073529) on OSX. All builds are inclusive of
ra-neon:
$ svn checkout https://rf-ace.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/ rf-ace.svn
--username trobin...@systemsbiology.org
... file data ...
Checked out revision 265.
$ cd rf-ace.svn
... make some changes to existing files ...
$ svn commit
... write the log in my default editor ...
"svn-commit.tmp" 35L, 1392C written
svn: Commit failed (details follow):
svn: access to '/svn/!svn/act/c23cbe26-fda3-46d6-a358-d1d20738c4bf'
forbidden
svn: Your commit message was left in a temporary file:
svn: '/path/to/my/repo/scrubbed/from/this/report/rf-ace.svn/svn-commit.tmp'
This same behavior exhibits in 1.6.17 (r1128011), and when a log
message is given using -m.
Here is an approximately equivalent session using SVN version 1.6.11
(r934486) in CentOS 6:
$ svn checkout https://rf-ace.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/ rf-ace
--username trobin...@systemsbiology.org
... file data ...
Checked out revision 265.
$ cd rf-ace
... make some changes to existing files ...
$ svn up
... file data ...
Checked out revision 269.
$ svn commit -m "Irrelevant log message you can find in r270 of rf-ace"
Authentication realm:<https://rf-ace.googlecode.com:443> Google
Code Subversion Repository
Password for 'trobinso':
[In which I press enter here to fall back to explicit Username
specification]
Authentication realm:<https://rf-ace.googlecode.com:443> Google
Code Subversion Repository
Username: trobin...@systemsbiology.org
Password for 'trobin...@systemsbiology.org': [My correct password is
entered here]
Sending test/argparse_test.hpp
Transmitting file data .
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
ATTENTION! Your password for authentication realm:
<https://rf-ace.googlecode.com:443> Google Code Subversion Repository
can only be stored to disk unencrypted! You are advised to configure
your system so that Subversion can store passwords encrypted, if
possible. See the documentation for details.
You can avoid future appearances of this warning by setting the value
of the 'store-plaintext-passwords' option to either 'yes' or 'no' in
'/my/home/directory/.subversion/servers'.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Store password unencrypted (yes/no)? yes [I know, I know. See my
notes below.]
Committed revision 270.
Note that on personal dev boxes, authentication information has been
stored locally in ~/.subversion (which, I note as an aside, is
something I only do with definedly-insecure passwords like those
automatically generated by Google Code on machines that are for
internal development only). This, too, may cause the issue.
My workaround, of course, is obvious. For all versions of SVN,
specifying the username explicitly (a la "--username
trobin...@systemsbiology.org") immediately follows up with a
challenge for my password. I have not verified if this resolves
future commit attempts.
The catalyst for the issue is Google's recent transition of Google
Code login system to that of Google Accounts. In this case, for
conflicting users, the issue only exposed itself when we cut back
over to our original usernames, and I would speculate this occurs if
(and only if)
the same username is specified with an alternate password (as mine was).
Thus, we have a compelling case for potentially spurious handling of
conflicting user credentials, as may well expose themselves in the
migration of Google Code SVN repositories. In which I would
speculate that the right approach would be to invalidate the cached
copy of the user's credentials and re-challenge both the username
and the password. Ideally, this behavior would be grafted into a
configuration value, should it not already exist.
As you might expect, searching for this information is
nigh-impossible for this exact edge condition, and you will probably
receive several queries of a similar nature as Google continues to
transition accounts with access to Google Code. Thus my posting of
this bug report: assuming my hypothesis is correct, it's a case of
inconsistent credential handling that results in a non-intuitive
error message. As above, this would be better handled by
configurable invalidation of the user's cached credentials.
Thus concludes my report. Please copy me on any mail you expect for
me to see, as I am not a subscriber to this list.
Best regards,
- Tom Robinson
