TortoiseSVN error “Working copy locked” “sqlite: a

Question

A working copy of an app is returning the described error when trying to Update.

Can this error be caused by having insufficient permissions to write to the folder (or some of the files within it)?

I've tried the "Release Lock" function and Tortoise tells me there are no locks.

Answer 1

I got that very error with TortoiseSVN under Windows. Apparently, the .svn folder has a small SQLite database file, which, if you don't have write access to, will cause that error.

As I was using TortoiseSVN through the windows shell (the right-click) menu, to work around it I ran the windows explorer I used to navigate to the folder as administrator and everything worked fine.

Another solution, of course, would be to give write rights to the user you are trying to use TortoiseSVN with.

Answer 2

While not related to tortoise, I just had this error because I ran svn update as root (forgot I was su'd on a Linux box) and got a conflict.

Fixing it was as simple as doing a chown -R user .svn and then chmod ug=rwx on the file wc.db in the .svn folder.

Answer 3

I got this error, because I moved my repositories to a new server. The main folder was created by root. As a result, there was an inconsistance of rights between restored files and newly created files. chown -R on the main folder solved the problem.