Configuring Subversion to use system users/passwords

Question

I'm using Subversion 1.6.1 with Apache, on a Linux machine. The server is running over http, not https.

I want to allow people to authenticate using the same login/password that they use to log into the machine via SSH. The SVN manual only explains how to use HTTP Basic Auth and Digest authentication. But with these approaches, I need to maintain a separate list of users, and they can't change their own passwords. I'd prefer to just use the system's users.

1. How do I do this?
2. Is this wise?

Answer 1

The question mentions basic/digest auth. First, note that basic/digest auth refers to the protocol between server and browser to communicate the user/password (on Apache 2.2, using authentication front-end modules such as mod_auth_digest and mod_auth_basic).

Behind the scenes, Apache can use a number of different sources of user/password information to check against. mod_authn_file which uses a "password file" is a common one, and it sounds as though that's what you're referring to.

To access the system user/password on a Linux box, Apache project itself doesn't provide any authentication back-end modules, but there are 3rd-party ones available. See this article which may be helpful:

Apache 2.2 authentication with mod_authnz_external

Answer 2

I would say this is a perfect serverfault question.

BUT, I do it using WebDav in Apache and pwauth.