How to solve 403 Forbidden in SVN access

Question

I have accidentally updated my VisualSVN server to 2.6.5. There seems to be some issues with upgrading to SVN 1.8.3. I also updated the clients to VisualSVN to 3.5.3 which also incorporates 1.8.3.

My server points to repositories on a remote server. This has always worked in the past. Now the server can look at the repositories without problems, but my clients get 403 errors and can't see any of the repositories.

Can anybody guide me to a solution on how to fix the access problem?

Answer 1

The upgrade from 2.5 to 2.6 was not successful, due to my own stupidity of pointing to a dummy repository before the upgrade and then returning back to the real one after (which therefore of course wasn't upgraded).
I solved the problem by adding an empty groups.conf file to the root of the real repository.

Answer 2

Server-wide access permissions have been removed in VisualSVN Server 2.6 and are planned to return in the upcoming 2.7 release.

VisualSVN Server 2.6 installer migrates server-wide access rules to per-repository level however you are required to revise and reconfigure conflicting rules. In other words, you have to reconfigure user access permissions after upgrading to VisualSVN Server 2.6. See the guide "Reconfiguring access permissions after upgrade to VisualSVN Server 2.6".

Answer 3

I know this question is old, but this was the first Google hit for me when searching for visualsvn server 403 forbidden. I had a repository that I had created before I set the permissions on all repositories in the server, and I was getting this error. Browsing to the repository showed no repositories, despite there being on the VisualSVN GUI. I then deleted the repository, re-created it, and it worked. This was a test repository that I had just created, but the issue seemed to be that the permissions weren't propagating to the specific repository. Version 2.7.8.

Answer 4

Reboot client-side Windows at least once