TortiseSVN svn+ssh Error: Unable to connect to a repository at URL ... Network connection closed unexpectedly

Question

I'm having problems accessing an SVN repository using TortoiseSVN 1.7.8.

The SVN repository is on a CentOS 6.3 box with openssh 5.3p1:81.el6 and appears to be functioning correctly.

# svnadmin --version
# svnadmin, version 1.6.11 (r934486)

I can access the repository from another CentOS box with this command:

svn list svn+ssh://[email protected]/var/svn/joetest

But when I attempt to browse the repository using TortiseSVN from a Win 7 workstation I'm unable to do so using the following path:

svn+ssh://[email protected]/var/svn/joetest

I receive the following error from TortoiseSVN:

Unable to connect to a repository at URL 'svn+ssh://[email protected]/var/svn/joetest' To better debug SSH connection problems, remove the -q option from 'ssh' in the [tunnels] section of your Subversion configuration file. Network connection closed unexpectedly

I'm able to login via SSH from the workstation using Putty.

The results are the same if I attempt access as root.

I've given ownership of the repository /var/svn/ to USER:USER and ran
chmod 2700 -R /var/svn/.

Because I can access the repository via ssh from another Linux box, permissions don't appear to be the problem.

When I watch the log file using tail -fn 2000 /var/log/secure, I see the following each time TortiseSVN asks for the password:

Sep 26 17:34:31 dev sshd[30361]: Accepted password for USER from xx.xxx.xx.xxx port 59101 ssh2
Sep 26 17:34:31 dev sshd[30361]: pam_unix(sshd:session): session opened for user USER by (uid=0)
Sep 26 17:34:31 dev sshd[30361]: pam_unix(sshd:session): session closed for user USER

I'm actually able to login, but the session is then closed immediately.

It caught my eye that the session is being opened for USER by root (uid=0), which may be correct, but I'll mention it in case it has something to do with the problem.

I looked into modifying the svnserve.conf, but as far as I can tell, it's not used when accessing the repository via svn+ssh, a private svnserve instance is created for each log in via this method. From the manual:

There's still a third way to invoke svnserve, and that's in “tunnel mode”, with the -t option. This mode assumes that a remote-service program such as RSH or SSH has successfully authenticated a user and is now invoking a private svnserve process as that user. The svnserve program behaves normally (communicating via stdin and stdout), and assumes that the traffic is being automatically redirected over some sort of tunnel back to the client. When svnserve is invoked by a tunnel agent like this, be sure that the authenticated user has full read and write access to the repository database files. (See Servers and Permissions: A Word of Warning.) It's essentially the same as a local user accessing the repository via file:/// URLs.

The only non-default settings in sshd_config are:

Protocol 2 # to disable Protocol 1

SyslogFacility AUTHPRIV

ChallengeResponseAuthentication no

GSSAPIAuthentication yes
GSSAPICleanupCredentials yes

UsePAM yes

AcceptEnv LANG LC_CTYPE LC_NUMERIC LC_TIME LC_COLLATE LC_MONETARY LC_MESSAGES
AcceptEnv LC_PAPER LC_NAME LC_ADDRESS LC_TELEPHONE LC_MEASUREMENT
AcceptEnv LC_IDENTIFICATION LC_ALL LANGUAGE
AcceptEnv XMODIFIERS

X11Forwarding no

Subsystem       sftp    /usr/libexec/openssh/sftp-server

Any thoughts?

Sauropod

Just a thought, try taking the USER@ out of the URL and wait for tortoise to prompt for credentials. Not sure if it will work, but it is worth a try. – County

Thanks for the suggestion, but same result. – Sauropod

When you open the tortoise repo-browser, what error does it give you? – County

I added the error message near the top of the question. – Sauropod

Can you ssh ok using the same credentials? – Tiffaneytiffani

Yes, I can SSH from the win 7 workstation and from another CentOS box using both the user account and root. I had a thought that the problem may have to do with a PAM setting, but I haven't worked with Pam before and I haven't had time to read up on it. – Sauropod

Answer 1

I finally came across a solution for this. In the TortoiseSVN FAQ of all places:
TortoiseSVN Frequently asked questions

From the FAQ:
SVN+SSH: Connection closed unexpectedly

It has been reported that svn+ssh connections of the form svn+ssh://[email protected] which were previously working, stop working with TortoiseSVN 1.5. This seems to be related to plink, and occurs if you have a default hostname set in PuTTY.

If this is the case you can fix it by using regedit or regedt32 to clear HKEY_CURRENT_USER/Software/SimonTatham/Putty/Sessions/Default%20Settings/HostName.

---

Another user has reported the following server-side fix:

• ssh into your account
• cd ~
• cp /etc/bashrc .bashrc
• nano .bashrc
• put a # before the line "mesg y" (which comments it out)
• Ctrl+X to exit, press Y when prompted to save.

---

I didn't try the first approach of editing my registry.

The second approach of editing the bash configuration worked for me.

A note about the bash configuration method:

If you're on shared hosting, your user .bashrc file will likely be loading the global /etc/bashrc file. You won't be able to edit the global file, so you'll need to work around that.

Some possible approaches:

• Try adding mesg n to your user .bashrc file. I'm not sure if this will work or whether it should be placed before or after the global file is loaded.

• Don't include the global file and hard code all the settings in your user .bashrc file.

• Remove the mesg y setting from the global /etc/bashrc file as it's loading. This question discusses how to do that: Use a grepped file as an included source in bash

Sauropod

I'm trying to do the same exact thing and I'm receiving the identical error message that you posted above. I can, however, connect to my repo by using the gui and browing to it with svn+ssh://user@ip/repo but it will not allow me to do this through the command line. Have you had any luck doing this using the command line? – Eyecup

@nkon It was a small project and I no longer have access to that server, so I can't test against it. I suggest that you open a question and include all the details about the commands that work and don't work along with log entries and your configuration for SVN, SSH and BASH (similar to what I included in my question and answer). That will give the best opportunity for someone to see what might be causing the problem. Add a comment here after you create the question and I'll take a look at it. – Sauropod

Answer 2

An old question, but still top of the stack on Google, so I thought I'd share my solution.

Simply, it was because I didn't have a "home" directory for my user on the server. Changing the SSH client to the plink.exe that comes with Putty (right-click on folder | TortoiseSVN | Settings | Network) allowed me to see the error as the windows appeared on screen.

Perzan

Answer 3

In my case the cause was, that the svnuser hasn't a shell (it was /bin/false).
This isn't visible in the ssh log even with debug ssh -vvv.

When you have this type of problem your debug output will look like this

debug1: Entering interactive session.
debug1: Remote: Forced command.
debug1: Remote: Port forwarding disabled.
debug1: Remote: Agent forwarding disabled.
debug1: Remote: X11 forwarding disabled.
debug1: Remote: Pty allocation disabled.
debug1: Remote: Forced command.
debug1: Remote: Port forwarding disabled.
debug1: Remote: Agent forwarding disabled.
debug1: Remote: X11 forwarding disabled.
debug1: Remote: Pty allocation disabled.
debug1: Sending environment.
debug1: Sending env LANG = en_GB.UTF-8
debug1: Sending command: svnserve -t
debug1: client_input_channel_req: channel 0 rtype exit-status reply 0
debug1: client_input_channel_req: channel 0 rtype [email protected] reply 0
debug1: channel 0: free: client-session, nchannels 1

When the shell is set to /bin/bash the log changes to

debug1: Sending env LANG = en_GB.UTF-8
debug1: Sending command: svnserve -t
Path: MyRepo
URL: svn+ssh://[email protected]/MyRepo

Avulsion

Answer 4

I had the same issue, and I tried the regedit solution.

In my case the Default Host Name was not to blame, but the regedit showed me a space in the saved session name (%20).

Putty does not care about the session name when you open a connection from there, hence there was no error when connecting from Putty. But the session name is important in your svn+ssh:// url!

In my case the Putty session name was " server", and when I did a svn checkout I used "svn+ssh://server/srv/svn/repo", hence the error.

Fleta

Answer 5

I ran into this problem when moving my old svn repository to a new Ubuntu 20.04 server and was trying to checkout the repo from Windows (with tortoisesvn). I finally realized the new server didn't have svn installed on it and it is needed to serve the repository. Simple fix for me was:

sudo apt install subversion

Holzer

Answer 6

TL;DL: Add key to PageAnt

First test if your Putty configuration is fine - you can connect by Putty using a key and you see something like:

Using username "svn". Authenticating with public key "imported-openssh-key" Server refused to allocate pty ( success ( 2 2 ( ) ( edit-pipeline svndiff1 absent-entries commit-revprops depth log-revprops atomic-revprops partial-replay inherited-props ephemeral-txnprops file-revs-reverse ) ) )

Then start PageAnt (it's in the same installation package as PuTTY and PuTTYgen) and you have to add your key there.

In my case it solved the problem. In some cases configuration works fine without configuring PageAnt, in some cases it doesn't, although it seems that all the option are set in the same way.

Remarque

Answer 7

Maybe this simple solution will work:
Go to your putty and check whether the saved session name matches with the name (svn saved session name in putty) that you are trying to take checkout with...
E.G.: in svn saved session, the name is saved as coreSvn, and the checkout url is: svn+ssh://svnuser@core/COCRETE/branches/R20181121-0.0.2-RELEASE, this won't work. Change the @core to @coreSvn or @coresvn

Cirillo