Ok, I found what wrong with my authz file's settings after read the svnbook carefully again.
Now there is only one thing still doesn't work for me: deny the access of a subdirectory: by follow the example in the svnbook, I have the following setting: #--------------- [/] superuser = rw #* = r [Playground:/proj1] user1 = rw [Playground:/proj1/trunk/proj1Folder1] user1 = [Playground:/proj2] user2 = rw #---------------- suppose the user1 shouldn't have access to the "/proj1/trunk/proj1Folder1" directory. but when I do checkout, that directory is still be checked out to my machine. is that behavor correct? On Wednesday, September 10, 2014 2:05 PM, James <oldyounggu...@yahoo.com> wrote: My svnserve is running on Fedora and I can access (checkout, update, ..) with svn://repository/.. without any issue from local machine and another machine. I also setup user/password access control. It works great. Now I am trying to add path-based access control on top of it. I enabled the "authz-db = authz" on the svnserve.conf file. I tested with following settings on the authz file: #================= #[/home/svn/Playground/proj1] #[/home/svn/Playground] #[/home/svn/Playground/] #[repository:/Playground] #[repository:/proj1] [repository:/*] testuser = rw $authenticated = rw * = rw but none worked. I always get this error: svn: E170001: Authorization failed. If I disable the "authz-db = authz" on the svnserve.conf file, svn immediately works. My svn repositry is in /home/svn directory. The repository name is Playground. There are two projects there: proj1 and proj2. When I try to do checkout with --username --password option, I was asked for password. After pass the name/password, I received the "svn: E170001: Authorization failed." error. My setting in the authz file is not correct? or I need to change more configurations? thanks, James