SVN dump & restore workflows
Use svnadmin locally or svnrdump remotely to export repositories, compress dumps, and rehydrate targets without losing revisions.
Local and remote dump recipes
These commands run on SSH consoles. Choose the local path dump when you control the repository folder, or use svnrdump against remote servers that expose the interface.
Local SVN backup & restore
Dumping a repository creates a complete revision history that you can later load into any repository directory.
svnadmin dump /path/to/repository > svnexport.dump
Restore the dump into an existing or newly created repository. Hooks must be copied manually from the hooks directory.
svnadmin load /path/to/repository < svnexport.dump
Compress large dumps with gzip to save space.
svnadmin dump /path/to/repository | gzip -9 > svnexport.dump
Restore compressed dumps through a pipeline.
gunzip -c svnexport.dump | svnadmin load /path/to/repository
Remote SVN backup & restore
Use svnrdump against HTTP[S] endpoints. Authentication is possible via --username/--password flags.
svnrdump dump http://domain.tld/repo > svnexport.dump
Authenticate when required.
svnrdump dump http://domain.tld/repo > svnexport.dump --username admin --password admin --non-interactive
Import reversed dumps; remote imports demand svn server ≥1.7.
svnrdump load http://domain.tld/repo < svnexport.dump
# or if authentication required
svnrdump load http://domain.tld/repo < svnexport.dump --username admin --password admin --non-interactive
If you encounter property errors, install the pre-revprop-change hook via shell.
printf '#!/bin/sh\nexit 0' > /path/to/repository/hooks/pre-revprop-change && chmod +x /path/to/repository/hooks/pre-revprop-change
Once the hook is enabled, retry the import.
Subversion support
Our SVN hosting team can import a dump for you and keep repositories running in secure German data centers. Use the product highlight below to explore managed plans.