Every time users try to access my repository, the process just hangs. Is my repository corrupt?

Your repository is not corrupt, nor is your data lost. If your process accesses the repository directly (mod_dav_svn, svnlook, svnadmin, or if you access a file:// URL), then it's using Berkeley DB to access your data. Berkeley DB is a journaling system, meaning that it logs everything it is about to do before it does so. If your process is interrupted (Control-C, or segfault), then a lockfile is left behind, along with a logfile describing unfinished business. Any other process that attempts to access the database will just hang, waiting for the lockfile to disappear. To awaken your repository, you need to ask Berkeley DB to either finish the work, or rewind the database to a previous state that is known to be consistent. WARNING: You can seriously corrupt your repository if you run recover and another process accesses the repository.

Make absolutely sure you disable all access to the repository before doing this (by shutting down Apache, removing executable permissions from 'svn'). Make sure you run this command as the user that owns and manages the database, and not as root, else it will leave root-owned files in the db directory that cannot be opened by the non-root user who manages the database, which is typically either you or your Apache process. Also be sure to have the correct umask set when you run recover, since failing to do so will lock out users that are in the group allowed to access the repository.

Simply run: svnadmin recover /path/to/repos

Once the command has completed, check the permissions in the db directory of the repository.

Sometimes "svnadmin recover" doesn't work. You may see it give errors like this:

Repository lock acquired. Please wait; recovering the repository may take some time... svnadmin: DB_RUNRECOVERY: Fatal error, run database recovery svnadmin: bdb: Recovery function for LSN 175 7066018 failed on backward pass svnadmin: bdb: PANIC: No such file or directory svnadmin: bdb: PANIC: fatal region error detected; run recovery

or like this:

Repository lock acquired. Please wait; recovering the repository may take some time... svn: DB_RUNRECOVERY: Fatal error, run database recovery svn: bdb: DB_ENV-< log_flush: LSN of 115/802071 past current end-of-log of 115/731460 svn: bdb: Database environment corrupt; the wrong log files may have been removed or incompatible database files imported from another environment [...] svn: bdb: changes: unable to flush page: 0 svn: bdb: txn_checkpoint: failed to flush the buffer cache Invalid argument svn: bdb: PANIC: Invalid argument svn: bdb: PANIC: fatal region error detected; run recovery svn: bdb: PANIC: fatal region error detected; run recovery [...]

In that case, try Berkeley DB's native db_recover utility (see db_recover documentation). It usually lives in a "bin/" subdirectory of the Berkeley DB installation, for example if you installed Berkeley DB from source, it might be /usr/local/BerkeleyDB.4.2/bin/db_recover; or on systems where Berkeley DB comes prepackaged it might just be /usr/bin/db_recover. If you have multiple versions of Berkeley DB installed, make sure that the version of db_recover you use matches the version of Berkeley DB with which your repository was created. Run db_recover with the "-c" ("catastrophic recovery") flag. You can also add -v for verbosity, and -h with an argument telling it what db environment to recover (so you don't have to cd into that directory). Thus: db_recover -c -v -h /path/to/repos/db Run this command as the same user who owns the repository, and again, make absolutely sure that no other processes are accessing the repository while you do this (e.g., shut down svnserve or Apache).