Update #1: I normally add ‘Updates’ at the bottom, but this one simplifies this entire post. Daniel Spiewak was kind enough to point out that simply using the preferred Eclipse Subversion plugin “Subversive” works right out of the box, without any of this monkey-business. I have not confirmed this yet though, but I’d say it’s worth a try before doing all the stuff below.
NOTE: I am using Eclipse 3.2.2 + Subclipse 1.0.5 on Windows XP
So it’s pretty slick that MediaTemple lets you setup Subversion repositories on your (gs) accounts. I did that and followed this document from their Knowledge base to get the repository created. I stopped after this command:
svnadmin create –fs-type fsfs <repo-name>
Because the rest of the work, to create the project dirs, I can do from Eclipse once it’s working.
The problem now is that every time you try and connect to your repository, using a connection string that looks like this:
svn+ssh://serveradmin%25<customerdomain.com>@<customerdomain.com> /home/<site_number>/data/<repo-name>
NOTE: There is a space in the URL above right after <customerdomain.com>, this is intentional to allow the line to wrap so you can read the entire URL. You should not actually include the space in the URL you construct in your subversion client.
NOTE: In the comments at the bottom of the KB page, some user mentions using @ instead of %25 for another SVN client, in Eclipse, you need to use %25.
NOTE: You might notice, while SSH’ed into your MT account, that the actual path to your repository is more along the lines of /home/<site_number>/users/.home/data/<repo-name>. That’s ok, go ahead and use the path above and it still works.
Now, in order to get the actual connection working and have it stop failing in Eclipse, you need to check out this blog entry. It discusses how to setup a proper tunnel for SVN over SSH, which is what Eclipse keeps complaining about.
The trick is to load up your file C:\Documents and Settings\[user_name]\Application Data\Subversion\config in a text editor, go down to the line that looks like:
# ssh = $SVN_SSH ssh
And change it to something like this:
ssh = C:/Program Files/TortoiseSVN/bin/TortoisePlink.exe
NOTE: Using back-slashes instead of front-slashes won’t work on Windows.
You’ll notice I have TortoiseSVN installed, so I’m using the TortoisePlink executable. That might be the easiest thing to do, otherwise if you know what you are doing, feel free to specify something else.
Now that you have that setup, notice that if you attempt your connection in Eclipse again, it will work this time, but prompt you constantly for your password.
So now before we go freaking nuts, check out this article, it tells us how to setup password files for SSH so it stops prompting us. The key seems to be going to the PuTTY Homepage, and downloading PuTTYGen.
After you download PuTTYGen, run it. Tell it to generate a key and move the mouse around to add randomness to the key:
When you are done generating the key, save Private key to a file, then move it someplace safe on your hard drive. Also you can copy the Public key to the clipboard as you will need it later.
Now go back to the blog entry we were reading earlier, and take note of the command:
ssh = [path_to_ssh_client] -2 -i [path_to_private_key_file]
So given that we are using TortoiseSVN already, our version of this string will look like this:
ssh = C:/Program Files/TortoiseSVN/bin/TortoisePlink.exe -2 -i C:/ssh_private_key.ppk
Before we are done, we now need to login to the site using SSH that we want to connect to, and do the following:
- $ mkdir ~/.ssh
- $ cd ~/.ssh/
- $ touch authorized_keys
- Open the authorized_keys file you just created in a text editor.
- Paste the contents of the public key PuTTYGen created for you into the authorized_keys file.
The content you want to paste in Step #5 is from the window in PuTTYGen that tells you to:
NOTE: In the image above, the key is truncated for security reasons, yours will be much longer.
Now when you save that file and try and access the Subversion repository on MediaTemple, you won’t be prompted for a password and it will just work.
And that’s it… all 77 steps of this simple walk through 
Or you could just use Subversive and it all works perfectly out of the box.
Good lord, are you serious?
I had in the back of my mind “I should try this with Subversive after I’m done” but never got around to it.
That’ll learn me!
Daniel thanks for the heads up buddy, I’ll add it to the post ASAP for others… except at the top so they see that first
I tried Daniel’s idea, and it didn’t work. I keep getting a “illegal hex character ‘a’ after %” sort of error. Subversive doesn’t like the % in the name.
Daniel,
Does it work if you change it back to @?
Riyad, nope. Both svn+ssh://user@domain.com/path/to/repo and svn+ssh://user@domain.com@domain.com/path/to/repo do not work.
I’m going to throw myself off a cliff now.
@Daniel
Very odd, we should probably file a bug with Subversive, try to get them to fix it.
To their credit, this is a really strange SSH username formatting and I don’t really blame them for not supporting it (yet).
Daniel,
Try using Subclipse in the mean time until Subversive gets it’s svn+ssh support fixed up.
I tried checking Eclipse’s bug tracker to see if it was a known bug and didn’t find anything… although I’m not sure if subversive is officially an Eclipse project or if it’s still in incubator.
I tried Subclipse too with no success. I probably didn’t set something up correctly, so I’ll revisit that software sometime in the future. The hunt continues!
How about witting up instructions for using the subversive plug-in. I could not get it up and running either.
Greg,
I don’t use Subversive so I’m not sure how to get it working, but I use Subclipse regularly with it and it works fine with the instructions above (as long as they are)
Which part were you getting stuck on?
Subversive hasn’t given me anything but trouble until now. Currently I am getting a no class def error for repository location validation. Google does not have an answer yet… Anybody here with that same problem? Would be really glad to find an answer since I kind of dislike subclipse…
Thanks Marijn
Marijn,
They are both surprisingly crappy…
What are you doing when you get the NoClassDef error? Or do you get it and the plugin won’t even load?
The plug-in will load but when I try to connect to my repo it pops up a send-error-feedback screen saying some class definition was not found for validating the repository location…
I really love Eclipse as an editor but getting stuff to just work, especially “out of the box”, is just terrible. The whole software-update/managing should really get a lot more attention.
If you would like more info let me know.
Marijn
The exact error:
Subversive: ’0×00400006: Validate Repository Location’ operation finished with error: java.lang.NoClassDefFoundError
Marijn,
The Eclipse Update Mechanism has been one of the most-complained about designs and features of the Eclipse platform since it’s inception.
Software vendors that build products ontop of the platform (forget the users) find the mechanism almost completely unusable in some pretty normal update cases. Unfortunately the group working on that aspect of Eclipse think it’s just fine which is why it hasn’t fundamentally changed it’s design since Eclipse 2 I think.
As far as that error goes, if you are able to see it *that* quickly by simply trying to connect to a Repo, I guess you can’t be alone… have you tried searching the Subversive group?
Unfortunately I don’t use Subversive so my ability to help with it is diminished.
You might also make sure (Help > Software Updates > Manage Config) that the Subversive plugin is installed correctly and isn’t missing some plugin dependency or something. You will also want to make sure you installed a version of Subversive that is compatible with your release of Eclipse.
Well, last night I figured to go for a complete re-install of Eclipse. Downloaded the same packages (for all I know at least) but somehow it works now:D
Doh… well I’m glad it’s working. I hope it doesn’t break again. If it does you can try troubleshooting using some of the tips I mentioned, it might help get things narrowed down.
Eclipse can become a crowded/confused place and does not avoid the “DLL Hell” phenomenon that any large complex system suffers from unfortunately
The described problem was reviewed and probably a fix for it was found. It would be available in the next version of Eclipse Subversive.
To access the repository you should specify only % in username, not %25.
Best regards, Alexei Goncharov (Subversive team).
https://bugs.eclipse.org/bugs/show_bug.cgi?id=211418 – bug description.
Alexei,
Thanks for the heads up, we appreciate you keeping us posted on the issue.
one important note: when copying/pasting public key to the file be sure to get rid of any new lines – I used nano (over ssh) to edit “authorized_keys” and I when pasted public key copied directly from PuTTyGen there were three lines of text (probably something with new line symbol differences between Windows and Unix – in Notepad there was only one line) and when I left it like that I couldn’t connect to repository
Thanks. The MT kb article is pretty incomplete and this was pretty helpful.
We wrote a similar article for the DV 3.5 servers, enjoy : http://www.debuggeddesigns.com/blog/view/how-to-setup-a-subversion-svn-repo-on-a-media-temple-dv-3.5-server