svn Can't set position pointer in file

svn svnadmin fsfs
Peter Cogan picture Peter Cogan · Jan 25, 2013 · Viewed 7.3k times · Source

I'm having an issue with an svn repository that has been working just fine up to now.

I am getting the error

svnadmin: Can't set position pointer in file 'repository/db/revs/0/783': Invalid argument

for example when I run

svnadmin verify

Other general symptoms include not being able to checkout, update, commit etc.

Any help much appreciated

thanks! Peter

Answer

Matt Collins picture Matt Collins · Oct 18, 2018

OK... I just had this problem and was able to fix it. I'm using FSFS. The last good revision I had was Revision Number 88. Revision 89 was the one that was broken.

  1. I copied the repository and named it repository-2018-10-18-broken. Absolutely do this first!!!

  2. I deleted the following files in the original repository:

/repository/db/revs/0/89

/repository/db/revprops/0/89

/repository/db/transactions/89*.*

  1. Using my trusty text editor, I then edited the file /repository/db/current and changed the 89 to 88. I left in the trailing new line.

This worked like a charm. I can't say it will work for anyone else, but I don't see why it wouldn't. It seems like it effectively, truly, deletes the bad revision.

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