How do I back up a remote SVN repository

Question

I am currently moving my SVN server from my home server to my remote server so I can access it more easily from other locations. My remote server is not backed up so I want

Answer 1

rsync (or DeltaCopy which is a Windows UI on top of it) would be a good choice to incrementally copy the complete repository at the filesystem level.

You can also use svnsync to copy new revisions directly from one SVN server to another.

Answer 2

I would use either svnsync or svnadmin hotcopy as both of these techniques are guaranteed to copy valid data from the repository, even if a transaction is in progress. Other file synchronisation techniques may not be as reliable, depending upon the repository format.

Answer 3

EFraim mentioned rsync while I wrote this so that's covered.

If you don't want to work with that, the Subversion Book offers the svnadmin dump --incremental option explained here:

• Repository Maintenance (scroll down the page to the "backup" section)
• Migrating a repository has examples on svnadmin dump --incremental

However, to do this successfully, you have to juggle with revision numbers - rsync'ing the raw repository data directories will be easier.

The hard part will probably be setting up rsync so your local and remote machine can communicate securely (i.e. set up an SSH service on the 2003 server). DeltaCopy that Wim mentions is very interesting and would be my first shot; for command line operation only, here is a howto on how to get Rsync running as a service on Windows 2003.