[chora] subversion question and error

[Manuel Desdin]

hi *!
I am trying to use chora version 2.0.1-rc1 as a subversion repository  
browser, but I encountered an error, and so I want to ask the list  
for some help:
I haven't found a clear way to tell chora about authentication on the  
remote repository, maybe it asks when connecting and stores this  
authentication info in session, or maybe the trick is to use only one  
user, the one chora (web server) runs under, and pass the directory  
with the cached subversion authentication with the argument --config- 
dir to svn. so I resolved to try it locally with an url of type  
file://, but the first very strange error that appears, is:

svn: Can't check path '/root/.subversion': Permission denied

my question is of course why does it try to access this svn  
configuration, when my web server (apache running under linux) runs  
as user apache and its home directory is /var/www?
does the user apache needs shell access?
I have tried both options, without shell access /sbin/nologin and  
with shell access /bin/bash.

if I pass the argument --config-dir (a directory that is writable by  
apache) to the svn binary in conf.php, then the error disappears, but  
I get an empty listing of the repository and no .subversion  
configuration directory in there get created!

chora self works without any problem for the local cvs repository!
I let chora in every configuration print the command it is using and  
there is no problem when I try the exact command as the user apache  
in the shell.

my installation consists only of horde itself and chora, postgresql  
as database and ldap authentication, php default session handler.
apache and horde are set to debug log output but I can't see any  
useful error output.

if somebody out there is using chora for subversion, please help!

tia, manu.