The LFS Subversion (SVN) server provides services for all of the *LFS projects (and some others). The tree which we are interested in for BLFS editing is (unsurprisingly) the BLFS tree. A complete list of the modules which are available can be found using the interface at http://wiki.linuxfromscratch.org/blfs/browser/trunk.

There are two types of SVN access provided to the BLFS tree: anonymous read-only access which anyone can use and read-write access granted to active editors who have quantum accounts with membership in the appropriate groups.

To get anonymous access, simply use the following command:

svn co svn://linuxfromscratch.org/BLFS/trunk/

This will create a BLFS directory and copy the current working tree into it. When you wish to update your local copy (often called a sand box), simply cd into the directory and run:

svn update

For editors, access is slightly more complicated. You first need to generate yourself an ssh key-pair. You then need to upload your public key into your ~/.ssh directory on quantum. To generate the keys run:

ssh-keygen -t dsa

When prompted where to save them, it's probably best to leave them in ~/.ssh (as id_dsa and id_dsa.pub) unless you already have ssh keys there. You can use a null passphrase, but use of ssh-agent with a good password is recommended. Having generated your keys, upload ~/.ssh/id_dsa.pub to quantum and move it to ~/.ssh/authorized_keys on quantum. Your local copy of id_dsa and id_dsa.pub should remain untouched by this.

If your local userid and your quantum userid differ, you will need to create a ~/.ssh/config file on your local system with the contents:

Host svn.linuxfromscratch.org
User <quantum-userid>
RhostsRSAAuthentication yes

Once you have this setup, try to checkout the BLFS tree using:

svn co svn+ssh://linuxfromscratch.org/BLFS/trunk/

If this works, you'll get a nice trunk directory listing and you have your own sandbox! You also have write access so from now on be extra careful but note that no changes will be made until you use a svn commit command.

As with anonymous access, you can update your local copy by simply changing into the appropriate directory and running:

svn update