Lost access to isolated Subversion repo

Question

Long ago, an engineer created a TortoiseSVN repo on a PC that is not connected to any network. The entire installation was local to that PC. To my knowledge, the repo was never accessed by any other user. I do not have the engineer's password. The auth directory is empty - there are no cached credentials.

I now need to access this repo.

Question: Should I just abandon the repo, create a new one and import the files that we assume were associated with the original repo...or is there a solution that would allow me to retain all the old data and history?

Thanks

Answer 1

If it is repo, created in SomeDir by TSVN command "Create repository here" you can copy this Somedir whole directory into any location and get access to stored data using file:/// protocol (checkout from client, create portable dump with svnadmin).

Repo dir output

 Directory of Z:\repo

30.11.2012  12:02    <DIR>          .
30.11.2012  12:02    <DIR>          ..
30.11.2012  12:02    <DIR>          locks
30.11.2012  12:02    <DIR>          hooks
30.11.2012  12:02    <DIR>          conf
30.11.2012  12:02               234 README.txt
30.11.2012  12:02    <DIR>          db
30.11.2012  12:02                 2 format
30.11.2012  12:02           180 467 svn.ico

Answer 2

The "db" directory is where the data is. Is that populated? If so, you should be able to salvage it. About a year ago we had a server die, but the data was restored from tape and dumped to a shared network disk. We installed VisualSVNServer on a new box, created a new repo, then imported the old repo into it. We used an entirely different authentication model on the new one (LDAP) where the old one used .htaccess. There were no problems, it didn't need us to re-authenticate anything, it just pulled it right in.

http://www.visualsvn.com/server/