Updating from svn repository returns “Could not read chunk size” error

Question

When updating from subversion repository using tortoise svn client I get error looking like that:

Could not read chunk size: An existing connection was forci         


        

Answer 1

There is another annoying cause for this error message. It could be your router or your router's firmware.

I had recently upgraded my Linksys WRT110's firmware from version 1.0.02 to 1.0.07 and after that, subversion could no longer add new files to the repository. It could only update existing files. Rolling back to 1.0.02 fixed the problem.

Sources:

• http://blog.wouldbetheologian.com/2008/12/warning-on-linksys-wrt110-firmware.html
• http://homecommunity.cisco.com/t5/Wireless-Routers/Upgraded-WRT-110N-to-1-0-07-and-now-Subversion-won-t-work/td-p/321812

Basically, anytime the connection is abruptly dropped, you're going to get this error. Could be a configuration error on Apache, like many of you stated. It could also be due to a slow server or overloaded connection, or it could be due to a cheap router, as was in my case.

Answer 2

I changed to an Ubuntu server and we had this same error - across multiple client PC's, OS's, and client versions.

After making sure that both the file limit settings and Apache timeout settings were as suggested.

(See http://posidev.com/blog/2009/06/04/set-ulimit-parameters-on-ubuntu/ )

I eventually solved the problem by using the apache2-mpm-prefork package rather than the apache2-mpm-worker package.

Answer 3

This clearly has many causes, but for me this was fixed by restarting my SVN server (VisualSVNServer 2.5.1). This occurs frequently when doing a full repo checkout on a newly loaded dump.

Answer 4

Check the apache error log, there should be an error logged in there with an error number. That number will help finding out why the connection was dropped.

If there's nothing in the error log, check your virus scanner/firewall settings: some of those tools will drop a connection if they think the transferred data is dangerous.

Answer 5

The problem and (some other) disappeared after turning off client-side antivirus.

I'm using Ubuntu server with subversion 1.7.4 via Apache.

Answer 6

I just had this happen to me, and it was not a server issue; my working copy got corrupted (by me, incidentally).