tortoisesvn - Updating from svn repository returns "Could not read chunk size" error

Question

When updating from subversion repository using tortoise svn client I get error looking like that:

Could not read chunk size: An existing connection was forcibly closed by the remote host.

It doesn't prevent me from updating, just interrupts update process, so that I have to repeat update several times, before it is complete.

What can cause such behaviour and how to fix it?

Answer 1

I was getting the "Could not read chunk size" message from clients on several machines.

The key to figuring it out was this error in the Apache error log:

[Fri May 07 14:26:26 2010] [error] [client 155.35.175.50] Provider encountered an error while streaming a REPORT response.  [500, #0]
[Fri May 07 14:26:26 2010] [error] [client 155.35.175.50] Problem replaying revision  [500, #24]
[Fri May 07 14:26:26 2010] [error] [client 155.35.175.50] Can't open file '/usr/site/svnrep/impc/db/revs/16122': Too many open files  [500, #24]

The Apache process handling the svn operation was running out of file descriptors. On my Ubuntu server, I fixed it by editing /etc/security/limits.conf and adding this at the bottom:

*               hard    nofile          5000
*               soft    nofile          5000

Which increases the file descriptor limit from 1024 to 5000. Then I logged in on a fresh shell and confirmed that the limit got increased via ulimit -n. Then restarted Apache.