Binding to Subversion + SSH keys

[Penthesilea]

In the Flare knowledgebase, I noticed that in v7.1, Flare resolved issues with subversion and SSH. svn+ssh

I am using Flare 8.0 and have everything under subversion source control, however, now I am trying to BIND the project and I'm running into a problem. I can bind it fine; however, if someone else opens the project, it then prompts that user for my password.

This worked:
svn+ssh://username@server.company.com/svnroot/ls_gess/trunk/TEST/TEST_GESS_Content

What would be the configuration to remove the username? Everything intuitive has failed. There has to be a document or instructions regarding making this work since it was apparently resolved in 7.1. Can anyone offer suggestions?

[Nita Beck]

...it then prompts that user for my password.

I may be wrong about what I'm about to write, but I think the "it" in this situation is not Flare. My guess is that the SVN server is looking for the credentials of the user attempting to access the server. On your machine, your credentials apply to you, naturally. They are probably stored in a key file on your computer, which the SVN server finds and so is happy. Those other users need their own credentials in their own key files. So I think you need to talk to the administrator of the server.

Hope I haven't led you down the wrong path...

[kkelleher]

I may be wrong about what I'm about to write, but I think the "it" in this situation is not Flare.

I would absolutely agree with you. svn+ssh requires a separate tool to connect via Secure Shell (ssh). In our case, that's PuTTy. Each user has a public/private key pair that is used for authentication when contacting our svn server.

Perhaps the issue is that the person trying to open your project doesn't have svn+ssh configured properly. It might be as simple as needing the get the public/private key pair.

Thanks,

Kristen

Edit 2: I'm dragging this thread back up because of a discussion I had with Nita Beck at MadWorld. Even after this original post, I continued to have issues. When other users checked out, updated files, and tried to check back in, Flare returned svn errors about not being able to check in. We traced it back to Flare trying to check in as 'me' using the other writer's private key, which obviously won't work. But Nita tells me she is using Pageant to manager her private key, and has this config running. I'll circle back with more as I can confirm it.

EDIT: MadCap Tech Support says they don't support svn+ssh, or at least they don't support PuTTy. But for my team, this is working pretty much as expected. The PuTTy integration is chatty, and it opens and closes a lot of PuTTy and pLink windows, but it gets the job done.

[kkelleher]

MadCap Tech Support says they don't support svn+ssh, or at least they don't support PuTTy. But for my team, this is working pretty much as expected. The PuTTy integration is chatty, and it opens and closes a lot of PuTTy and pLink windows, but it gets the job done.

As it turns out, we did have a problem with this, but I assumed it wasn't related to SSH. The problem is one I've seen discussed a couple times on the forum (like here) -- when using Flare's built-in source control integration, files deleted in Flare never get actually deleted in Subversion (SVN).

As I mentioned in another thread, my team recently moved to a new svn server that uses LDAP instead of SSH for authentication. Once we moved to the new server, we stopped having issues with delete. My theory is that, since the subversion command to delete must be followed by another, separate command to commit the change, something Not-Quite-Right was going on. The add command, which is similar, always seemed to work though, so who can be sure?

I guess the upshot here is that, you *can* use Flare + Putty to access SVN via SSH, but you'll have to use another tool (like Tortoise or the plain-old command line) to commit any deletes or moves (delete + add).

Thanks,

Kristen

[Nita Beck]

Interesting. I very much appreciate your detailed description of what you've encountered and learned.

That said, I use Flare + PuTTY/Pagaent to manage my keys for accessing an SVN repo requiring ssh protocol. I have no issues whatsoever deleting files from my Flare projects. They are deleted in the repo. Can't explain why your mileage and mine vary so much.

[kkelleher]

Very interesting, Nita. Thanks for the info. I wonder if SVN versions make a difference? We were using 1.8 client against an earlier server version (1.6, maybe?). Now we're using 1.8 on both client and server. Maybe compatibility was the problem.

Thanks,

Kristen

[kkelleher]

Once we moved to the new server, we stopped having issues with delete.

Another great theory shot down by data.... late last week (at the end of our release cycle, naturally) we came across some added files that hadn't been committed by the Flare Check in All command. We had to check-in from the command line. So it looks like MadCap hasn't quite ironed the wrinkles out of this integration.

Thanks,

Kristen