How to make SVN remember password

Who is this post for?

This post is for anyone who wants a step by step guide to accomplish any of the following

1. Make a SVN client like tortoise svn remember password
2. Make linux server remember your password when logging through putty

Tools you need:

• Putty
• Puttygen

What you need to do:

1. Using putty – login to linux server. change directory to ~/.ssh/ by typing following command

cd ~/.ssh

2. Type command

   ssh-keygen -b 1024 -t dsa

   and press enter. Do not enter a passphrase. Hit enter when prompted for one. Same for the filename. default filename = id_dsa and id_dsa.pub. id_dsa is the private key file and id_dsa.pub is the public key file.

3. type command

   cat ~/.ssh/id_dsa.pub

   Copy the output to the clipboard by selecting the output by mouse.

4. Type command

   vi ~/.ssh/authorized_keys

   Hit i to enter Insert mode and then paste your public key (if there is already a key in this file, move to the bottom before pasting). Hit the ESC key to leave Insert mode and type :wq and hit enter to save and exit vi editor.

5. Using ftp download your key files – both private and public




6. In order to use the private key we get from the server, we have to convert it to a putty format. This is because the private key file format is not specified by some standard body. We can accomplish this using puttygen. Open Puttygen




7. In the tree structure on left, choose conversion -> import key -> choose the private key file downloaded from ftp




8. Choose to save private key. Choose path and save the file as anything.ppk




9. Run Putty. Specify parameters
   • Session->HostName: Hostname or IP Adress of your server
   • Session->Protocol: SSH
   • Session->Saved Sessions: MyConnection
   • SSH->Prefered SSH Protocol version: 2
   • SSH->Auth->Private Key file for auth: $PATH$mykey.PKK (replace $PATH$ with real path to the mykey.PKK file)
10. Go back to Session tab and hit “save” button. You will see “MyConnection” in the list of available connections.




11. Next click “open” and you should see a telnet login prompt. Use “myuser” as username (without double quotes of course) and if everything is OK, you don’t have to provide a password to your system. If the system still requires a password, something went wrong.




12. Now that linux server and putty manage to remember your password, you need an application client to use it. In this case it is SVN client e.g. tortoise svn. Go to TortoiseSVN->RepoBrowser and specify a URL like this:

    svn+ssh://myuser@MyConnection/usr/local/repos

    …where MyConnection is the putty session name and /usr/local/repos is my svn repository on linux server

And you are done …

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