Bug: apache/mod_svn intermittently creates transaction dirs with incorrect permissions or ownership such that the transaction breaks.

I'm about to file a subversion bug in relation to apache/mod_svn 
intermittently creating transaction dirs with incorrect permissions or 
ownership such that the transaction breaks.

Many times during the day commits are failing with an error message like the 
following:

*[Wed Aug 31 12:55:55 2005] [error] [client
192.189.224.121<http://192.189.224.121>
<http://192.189.224.121>] *
*Could not create activity *
*/svn/ResultsPlus/!svn/act/a24ba835-0155-2042-a734-13818c448007. [500, #0] *
*[Wed Aug 31 12:55:55 2005] [error] [client
192.189.224.121<http://192.189.224.121>
<http://192.189.224.121>] *
*could not begin a transaction [500, #13] *
*[Wed Aug 31 12:55:55 2005] [error] [client
192.189.224.121<http://192.189.224.121>
<http://192.189.224.121>] *
*Can't open file
'/svnroot/repos/ResultsPlus/db/transactions/90-1.txn/node.0.0':
*
*Permission denied [500, #13] 
*
Inspection on the server side reveals one of 2 scenarios:

   1. The transaction directory (e.g. 
   /svnroot/repos/reposname/db/transactions/90-1.txn) has the wrong 
   permissions and cannot be populated by the apache user (apache) - i.e. 
   drw-rwSrw- 
   2. The props file in the transaction directory (e.g. 
   /svnroot/repos/reposname/db/transactions/90-1.txn/props) is owned by 
   the root user and ONLY user has write permissions 

If the commit is retried, it may or may not succeed. To temporarily fix the 
problem, I must restart apache, and delete the broken transaction 
directories.

I am now running the latest stable apache(httpd-2.0.54) and subversion(
subversion-1.2.3) built from scratch. (This problem was first observed with 
prebuilt RPMS.) I am running Intel RedHat Enterprise Server 3 (rhel-3). I 
have audited the system extensively in an effort to identify any external 
processes that could be causing this problem and found now.

I have a little bash script that will repeatedly modify, commit, and sleep 1 
second that tests subversion. I can reproduce this error within 10 - 30 
commits. I posted this problem before (
http://svn.haxx.se/users/archive-2005-09/0228.shtml). More details can be 
found in that post. This problem was reported by another user as well in 
June (http://svn.haxx.se/users/archive-2005-06/1629.shtml) -- on Solaris. He 
was able to work around the problem by using setfacl however, rhel-3 (kernel 
2.4) doesn't appear to support setfacl completely.

If anyone can help me debug this problem further I'd appreciated it. I'm 
willing to try almost anything - a debug version of subversion, apache etc. 
If you'd like more information, please ask me. Otherwise, I'd welcome any 
tips for successfully logging a bug on
subversion.trigris.org<http://subversion.trigris.org>.


I feel I've exhausted all configuration possibilities between 
apache-subversion. I've tried creating a test repository from scratch - 
ensuring all commands out-of-apache-web-server were done as apache (sudo -u 
apache svnadmin ...). I've tried different file system locations. I've 
removed all but svn functionality from apache. I've used the simplest svn 
configuration possible..

Lost,
-John Duprey