E195019: Redirect cycle detected for URL

[Bo Berglund]

While trying to set up an Ubuntu Server 16.04-3 LTS with Subversion to act as a mirror
for our main VisualSVN server running on Windows Server 2016 I have run into a very
strange problem.

I have set up svn in the normal way and then I also set up a self-signed certificate
so I could use https for access before I opened the firewall port towards the Ubuntu
server (port 443 opened but not 80).
I thought I was all done when I could use a browser (both Chrome and FireFox tested)
to connect to the first repository and view it in the browser.

But then I tested with the svn client on the command line and this happened (I have
faked the real domain name):

D:\>svn list https://home.mydomain.com/svn/bosse
Error validating server certificate for 'https://home.mydomain.com:443':
- The certificate is not issued by a trusted authority. Use the
fingerprint to validate the certificate manually!
Certificate information:
- Hostname: home.mydomain.com
- Valid: from Mar 25 00:52:45 2018 GMT until Mar 22 00:52:45 2028 GMT
- Issuer: home.mydomain.com, IT, Somecompany Inc, Jarfalla, Stockholm, SE(***@mydomain.com)
- Fingerprint: 1C:84:47:97:89:7E:48:3B:C9:08:C0:F5:65:E8:01:B0:7F:DD:DB:21
(R)eject, accept (t)emporarily or accept (p)ermanently? p
Authentication realm: <https://home.mydomain.com:443> Subversion Repository
Username: bosse
Password for 'bosse': *********
Redirecting to URL 'https://home.mydomain.com/svn/bosse':
Redirecting to URL 'https://home.mydomain.com/svn/bosse':
svn: E195019: Redirect cycle detected for URL 'https://home.mydomain.com/svn/bosse'

So the situation is like this:
1) Using a web browser everything looks quite normal.
2) Using the svn client throws up error E195019

I am not really versed in Apache configuration files so I would appreciate if someone could say
what further information I need to supply in order to get to a solution.

The installed versions of svn are as follows:
Ubuntu Server 16.04: 1.9.3 (r1718519) (this was the latest version available for Ubuntu)
My laptop Win7 x64: 1.9.7 (r1800392)
Apache2 on Ubuntu is whatever version was available when I installed a few weeks back.

Best Regards,

Bo Berglund

[Paul Hammant]

I'd LOVE svn client to be able to follow 302 for GETs, but in the "Moved
Temporarily" mode of the original intent :)

I've been thinking about it quite a bit recently when designing extremely
loaded Svn solutions.

- Paul

[Bo Berglund]

On Mon, 26 Mar 2018 09:14:30 -0500, "Bo Berglund"

Post by Bo Berglund
I am not really versed in Apache configuration files so I would appreciate if someone could say
what further information I need to supply in order to get to a solution.

I think this is the file that is of interest:
/etc/apache2/mods-enabled/dav_svn.conf:

Alias /svn /var/lib/svn
<Location /svn>
DAV svn
SVNParentPath /var/lib/svn
AuthType Basic
AuthName "Subversion Repository"
AuthUserFile /etc/apache2/dav_svn.passwd
Require valid-user
</Location>

I also looked in /etc/apache2/sites-enabled/default-ssl.conf:

<IfModule mod_ssl.c>
<VirtualHost _default_:443>
ServerAdmin ***@somedomain.com
ServerName home.somedomain.com
DocumentRoot /var/www/html
ErrorLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/error.log
CustomLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/access.log combined
SSLEngine on
SSLCertificateFile /etc/ssl/certs/apache-selfsigned.crt
SSLCertificateKeyFile /etc/ssl/private/apache-selfsigned.key

<FilesMatch "\.(cgi|shtml|phtml|php)$">
SSLOptions +StdEnvVars
</FilesMatch>
<Directory /usr/lib/cgi-bin>
SSLOptions +StdEnvVars
</Directory>
BrowserMatch "MSIE [2-6]" \
nokeepalive ssl-unclean-shutdown \
downgrade-1.0 force-response-1.0

<Directory "/var/www/html">
AuthType Basic
AuthName "Restricted Content"
AuthUserFile /etc/apache2/private.htpasswd
Require valid-user
</Directory>
</VirtualHost>
</IfModule>


And in /etc/apache2/sites-enabled/000-default.conf:
(even though this should not matter since I am not using port 80 at
all....)

<VirtualHost *:80>
Redirect "/" "https://192.168.119.216/"

ServerAdmin ***@somedomain.com
DocumentRoot /var/www/html
ErrorLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/error.log
CustomLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/access.log combined
<Directory "/var/www/html">
AuthType Basic
AuthName "Restricted Content"
AuthUserFile /etc/apache2/private.htpasswd
Require valid-user
</Directory>
</VirtualHost>


Any ideas???

[Ryan Schmidt]

Post by Bo Berglund
Alias /svn /var/lib/svn

Remove that...

[Bo Berglund]

On Tue, 27 Mar 2018 03:47:54 -0500, Ryan Schmidt

Post by Ryan Schmidt

Post by Bo Berglund
Alias /svn /var/lib/svn

Remove that...

Thanks a million!

This line was entered due to the howto I used:
https://tecadmin.net/install-subversion-server-on-ubuntu/
Step #3 has that file content including the Alias.

I did not read the user comments on that page before but the problem
was already mentioned by user Bruno Romeiro with the solution given by
user Sean.
Shows that user feedback on howto pages like this is useful to read.


I removed the line and restarted apache2 and now I do not get the
error messages when doing a simple svn list command anymore.

Will next go over to the master server and run the svnsync intitalize
command. Hopefully this was the only problem.