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I have a client who had to rebuild his automated build server. He checked out his project folder from my subversion server but is now no longer able to commit - he gets this error:

Error: Commit failed (details follow):  
Error: Cannot write to the prototype revision file of transaction
'551-1' because a   
Error: previous representation is currently being written by another

I have searched Google but although this error has been often reported there is no clear explanation - does anyone on StackOverflow have a solution?

UPDATE: Nobody else commits to that repository, so it was not a transaction stuck (at least not from another user). In the end we found that permissions were not set correctly. Not that you would know it from this message, but that fixed the problem.

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your UPDATE is not very informative. What permissions were not set correctly ? –  Jus12 Jun 8 '11 at 14:05

14 Answers 14

You can clear this error w/out a reboot:

  1. Identify (or create) a directory in the root SVN repository that was not a part of the failed commit.

  2. Create a new file in the directory from step 1.

  3. Commit the new file (and directory if created in step 1). Because the file is new, it doesn't conflict w/the previous commit and can update the revision # on the server.

  4. Commit the original files/directories.

  5. Delete the new file (and directory if created in step 1).

  6. Commit the entire tree.

**Steps 5 & 6 aren't required, but I like to keep my repository tidy...

I get this error a lot b/c SVN frequently conks out in the middle of committing my large files, which in turn causes subsequent commits to try to write to the revision that was interrupted.

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I did it and I can commit now. However svnadmin lstxns still shows those hanging transactions. Is it a problem? –  Jirka-x1 Oct 20 '10 at 18:48
Worked like a charm –  Edison Gustavo Muenz Nov 17 '10 at 17:22
+1. This was a great solution, as I did not have access to svnadmin. –  Jeremy Dec 22 '10 at 16:11
+1 Agreed. Didn't want to wait for server admin to fix and this appears to work. Though I think I'm learning the value of small incremental commits... since it seems to keep having problems during transaction. –  manifest Jan 5 '11 at 22:58
wow, this worked like charm. +1 –  Esteban Apr 12 '11 at 21:01

I had a similar problem except the message said "...previous representation is currently being written by THIS process".

svnadmin lstxns did not show any transactions.

Restarting Apache solved the problem for me.

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The server didn't have any outstanding transactions and permissions were fine. Simply restarting Apache (I was committing over DAV) fixed it. Thanks! –  Cal Oct 17 '09 at 21:04

Your repository has a stuck transaction. You can use the svnadmin command to repair it. Like all the other svn utilities, svnadmin takes a command followed by options (usually just the repository directory). svnadmin has to be run on the server with the repository.

Do something like this:

svnadmin lstxns /path/to/repository

to get a list of transactions in process (you should see your offending 551-1 there). You can then decide how best to recover from this error... svnadmin also has a command rmtxns to delete the offending transaction. For more information, issue:

svnadmin help

or see the tigris website: http://subversion.tigris.org/. You can also get more detailed help on specific commands by following the help command with the name of the command you're interested in. For example:

svnadmin help lstxns

Obviously you will need shell access to the repository server and write permissions on the repository to use svnadmin. If you're repository format is Berkely DB you should suspend your svnserve daemon (if you use it) and any web_dav/web_svn access to ensure you don't corrupt the database while issuing svnadmin commands.

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Had same problem, restarting apache fixed the issue.

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This worked for me too! –  Ozair Kafray Nov 30 '11 at 6:24

For me the problem was solved (as hinted in the update of the question) by changing the permissions of my local folder (not the repository). In Windows Vista you do that by right-clicking on the folder and in properties/security you change permissions.

The error message is not very good and it wasn't easy to find an answer so I hope my answer helps other people to solve this annoying but on the other hand simple to solve problem.

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Change... to what? –  Mud Apr 7 '11 at 9:01
yes this answers is uninformative and confusing. Change permisionss of which directory to what? –  Jus12 Jun 8 '11 at 14:04
I'm sorry for being uninformative. One year after posting this I can't really remember what it was exactly. My best guess is that the folder had no write permissions and I gave those to the top folder of the working copy. I would just try giving as much permissions as necesary/possible. –  Omar Kohl Jun 8 '11 at 21:59
I've had this problem as well. The problem was that the web server process did not have write permission on the SVN repository so it could not acquire the lock. –  Nate C-K Apr 2 at 4:48

Ran into this same issue after I cancelled a commit in progress. After doing the svnadm rmtxns with the transaction number to remove, I still got the message. I am using webdav with apache, so I restarted apache as suggested (/sbin/service httpd restart). Worked.

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"Cannot write to the prototype revision file of transaction" Restarting apache also fixed this problem for me. I'm posting so that something useful might actually make it to the top of google.

Good luck!

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I haven't seen it, but going on the error message I'm guessing something has gotten stuck writing a file. I'd try restarting your svn server process / reboot server.

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I ran into the exact same issue with Visual SVN Server installed on Windows 2003, I had altered the default install to place the Repository folder onto a separate partition since the servers C drive is small. I had to change the permission to that folder (in this case D:\Repository), as a quick and dirty hack I simply added the "Everyone" user to this folder and selected "Modify" rights (not the most secure for sure but a dirty working hack none the less). This resolved the issue.

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I account the same wrong message, and when I "Get lock" the commit, success~

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I did a one vote up for @DamianM answer. In my case it seems that had been the problem. File Corruption which made it not possible to write on server. http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1910503/issue-with-svn-commit-for-certain-file-extension

But Instead of restarting your svn server process / reboot server I copied the dlls[files with problem] again to working folder and was able to commit.

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i got such a problem recently(eclipse 3.7+svn plugin) and reboot my computer.it works now!

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Just an ownership issue probably. Try recursively changing the ownership of the directory like this:

chmod -R 777 /path/to/repo
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Changing permissions of folders to 777 is generally not a good idea. It could become a security leak. –  pkout Dec 4 at 18:33

Mount Point for SubVersion repository was full in our case, adding more space.

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Did you get this same error, was adding more space the solution. Your post is so short it isn't clear if it's an answer or a comment. Details !!! –  RThomas May 18 '12 at 18:32

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