Setting up a SVN Server on a EC2 Instance (Ubuntu 14.04 LTS)

Setting up an SVN server on my EC2 instance (on AWS), is a major problem whenever we connect svn using key-file(key.pem for AWS).
Here’s my situation:

• I have a micro EC2 instance hosted with Amazon.
• I used a non-standard port for ssh access
• I have a pem file provided by Amazon for access through ssh
• I run Ubuntu 14.04 Server on my EC2 instance
• On the client side, I’m running Ububtu 14.04 Desktop

With that out of the way, the first thing I had to do was insure svn was installed on my server and Desktop :

sudo apt-get install -y subversion

Then, on my EC2 instance, I want to create both the directory where I’ll store repositories, and the subsequently, create the repository itself. Permissions and ownership are of the utmost importance. This worked for me:

sudo mkdir -p /srv/svn/
sudo chown ubuntu:ubuntu /srv/svn/
svnadmin create /srv/svn/{repo_name}
Mind the {rep_name} placeholder above 

vim /svnrepos/conf/svnserve.conf

In that file add these three lines:

anon-access = none
auth-access = write
password-db = passwd

Create a password file:

vi /svnrepos/conf/passwd

In that file add a line for your user:

# add users in the format : user = password
tony = mypassword

You don’t need to store your svn repos in /srv/svn/. Wherever you’d like, so long as the permissions and ownership is okay. Also, ubuntu:ubuntu is the username and group for my EC2 instance. I believe this is standard now for most AMIs, but change this if appropriate.
I had to do edit some subversion configuration settings. Even command line wasn’t working, because first, we need to create a tunnel
At my ubuntu Desktop (Client) :

vi ~/.subversion/config

Now, under the [tunnels] section, you want to define a rule.
Basically, you want to replicate the syntax that you would normally use for ssh-ing into your EC2 instance. In my case, this includes specifying the pem file path and port I connect through.
So under that [tunnels] section, I have something like this:

ssh-AWS = ssh -q -i /Users/AWS/Keys/awsec2.pem 

A couple things here:

1. It needs to be the full path to the pem file. You can’t use the ~ here.
2. It needs to be in the [tunnels] section. I had it at the end of the file at one point, and the tunnel wouldn’t work

Also, you can call you tunnel whatever you want. ssh-AWS or ssh-tunnel or what have you.
And finally, let’s checkout that repo we made

svn co svn+ssh-AWS://ubuntu@1.1.1.1/srv/svn/{repo_name}

In the above case:

• ssh-AWS is the name you gave to your tunnel
• ubuntu is the username for your EC2 connection (although I believe ubuntu is the default now)
• 1.1.1.1 is the IP address (or host if you want) of your EC2 instance
• {repo_name} is your repository’s name

Yup :)