How to modify or remove your SVN password in the client

For how common this task is, it’s incredibly hard to find on Google. You’ll need to remember this for anytime you want to change your user account, password, or just delete your account from your subversion client. This works in Netbeans, RabbitVCS, and a majority of other subversion clients that just connect with the svn package.

1. Open a terminal (This can be done in a file manager’s search tool, but I’ll show you how in a terminal so you get a better idea of how it works)
2. enter the command

   grep -r "<HOSTNAME>" ~/.subversion/auth/

   (Replace <HOSTNAME> with the SVN’s hostname, so for instance http://example.com/applepie/svn would be example.com) Grep searches inside files for whatever you put in the ” “. The -r makes it recursive, so it will look through all the files in all folders deeper than where it was directed to at the end of the line.

3. You will get a line that looks something like this

   /home/vi/.subversion/auth/svn.simple/888c928072e9643a13b38ea43532896d:<http://example.com:80> My Projects

   You want the path before the “:”

4. Now just enter

   rm /home/vi/.subversion/auth/svn.simple/888c928072e9643a13b38ea43532896d

   to remove the file, and have subversion forget your account credentials.

5. Next time you run your subversion, you will be asked for your username and password again.