I am not a user of Linux, but I am encountering some permissions problems with it that I hope someone can shed some light on.

Bit of background: A colleague of mine has a Linux box (running Debian I believe) with an SVN repository on it. The repository directory and files 'owner' is my colleauge. We are both members of a group called 'users'. He manages several projects both Linux and Windows apps, while I have one Windows app. For the Windows apps, we both use TortoiseSVN via an SSH link to commit/update.

Performing the command 'ls -l' shows the repository files and folders on the Linux box to have the following permissions:

-rwxrwx--- john users

However, when my colleauge commits to the repository, the permissions change to:

-rwxrwx--- john john

This then means I get 'Permission denied' when trying to access the repository myself as it appears that the group permissions have been overwritten with only 'owner' permissions.

To fix this, a 'chown -R' command is applied to the files/folders to set the permissions back to owner/group, but each time he writes to the repository, the issue repeats.

I'm not sure if this is solely an SVN problem, or a more fundamental owner/group issue.

Anyone any clue on how to stop this happening, or where to go and look? I'm trying to help out my colleague who is having some trouble resolving this issue.

Apologies for the vague info, I hope I have conveyed the problem clear enough. Like I say, I am not a Linux user, I have only put down what I have managed to pick up from looking over his shoulder.

Thanks for any pointers I can pass on!