svn: E120108: Unable to connect to SVN repo

Question

I recently replaced the hard drive of my Mac so I reinstalled SVN. But I can't connect to the repository, and the errors are:

svn: E120108: Unable to connect to a repository at URL 'xxxxxx'
svn: E120108: Error running context: The server unexpectedly closed the connection.

I can access the URL in browser. SVN is also installed correctly. When I type svn --version it shows that I have SVN 1.8.3.

Has anyone seen the same problem before. Any help is appreciated.

Answer 1

I was suffering from that exact error on Windows 10 for more than half a year, I think.
Finally, was able to resolve this today.
Haven't found this particular suggestion anywhere on SO, thus sharing with you guys! :)

First, a few details to add.
The problem was REALLY intermittent: sometimes worked OK, sometimes any command worked on the second run only.
That was somewhat OK during months, since I do not use SVN much (mainly use Git last years), but some of my side projects still have to use it, and a few days back I needed to svn up one of my workspaces when... 100 out of 100 attempts failed! (I executed it in a loop for /L %i in (1,1,100) do svn up & PowerShell -Command "get-date" just to test and collect the statistics).
I remember I did the same months back (when first experienced the issue) and the result was around 80% failed.

Googling the error again didn't help at all.

Changing the client didn't help as well (I tried with Subversion 1.8.17 and TortoiseSVN 1.9.7 and 1.12.0).
Btw, in Tortoise the first error code is a bit different:

svn: E170013: Unable to connect to a repository at URL 'xxxxxx'
svn: E120108: Error running context: The server unexpectedly closed the connection.

.
So, this time it blocked my work, and I dived right into finally resolving this today by reading number of docs and doing some more research and web surfing, eventually I came to this page: http://www.microhowto.info/howto/configure_subversion_to_trust_a_given_ssl_certificate.html

And, voila!
Adding the following line into my C:\Users\RAM237\AppData\Roaming\Subversion\servers fixed it once and for all:

ssl-authority-files = D:\Path\to\my\rootCA.pem

.
Funny thing, I haven't had such issues earlier when using various Linux svn clients or same Tortoise SVN on Windows 8.
It turned out, the company, siting this repo, switched to cert-based connection around the time I changed the OS :)

Hope this could be helpful for lost souls :D

Answer 2

In my case, firewall of antivirus program block this access. So change the network traffic filtering or turn off firewall (not recommend).

Answer 3

Check if you have a DNS A/AAAA Records addresses to ipv6. I remove the ipv6 address and it works.

Answer 4

The solutions listed here did not work for me but bobbogo's answer put me in the correct area.

Basically in ~/.subversion/servers I discovered the following

[global]
http-proxy-host= www-my-repo-address.com

Not sure how that setting got there. Cornorstone is installed on the machine maybe it modified it (but that's a guess).

Once the http-proxy-host setting was commented out the issue was resolved and the code could be checked out. i.e.

[global]
#http-proxy-host= www-my-repo-address.com

Note: I experienced this issue with both svn 1.7 and 1.9

Answer 5

Yet another fix. Seems to be related to serf. Add this line to your ~/.subversion/servers file (you can try it in the [global] section, but I wouldn't recommend leaving out on for all your connections:

[global]
http-chunked-requests = no

Answer 6

I solved this same issue with a recent install of SVN version 1.8.10 on a Linux Server. Type these commands:

svnserve

This starts the svn service.

svn checkout svn:url 'XXXXXX'

Use your check out functionality to checkout the code from your local repository.

Answer 7

I had the same issue with a recent install of SVN version 1.8.5 on a Windows Server 2012 R2 system.

Clearing out the saved authentication files and just re-authenticating fixed the issue for me. I deleted all the files with hashed names underneath the C:\Users[My User Name]\AppData\Roaming\Subversion\auth[authentication type]\ directories. The next time I ran SVN, it prompted me for my credentials and updated without a problem.

Answer 8

The removal of the auth folders did not work for me but I resolved a similar issue by using the https protocol in the URL as opposed to http (though the browser displays with the latter). Hope this helps others.