To add a SVN User to an Ubuntu Subversion SVN server is very simple. The first thing to do is to check the existence of the subversion passwd file, the default being /etc/subversion/passwd. This is the file containing user authentication details.
To check for its existence, run:
cat /etc/subversion/passwd
If it doesn’t exist you’ll need to create it as you add the first user account to your SVN, using he -c switch. Of course, if it does exist, don’t use the -c switch as this will overwrite your users file!
To add the first user and create the passwd file at the same time, run:
sudo htpasswd -c /etc/subversion/passwd user_name
This will prompt you to set a password for the user account.
From then on to add extra users, simply run:
sudo htpasswd /etc/subversion/passwd second_user_name
Nifty.