"No such repository hgadmin" while installing mercurial-server. - mercurial

Question

I'm trying to install mercurial-server. After adding my keys to keys/root and refreshing auth, I tried to clone hgadmin-repo but I get the following error:
$ hg clone ssh://hg#<domain>/hgadmin
remote: mercurial-server: no such repository hgadmin
abort: no suitable response from remote hg!
Anyone know what's the problem?

Answer 1

I had this same problem and for me it was a problem with the installation of the hgadmin repository. When I installed the package, I got errors from python saying the mercurial package wasn't installed. I assume that happened when mercurial-server tried to initialize the hgadmin repository. So when I went to checkout the hgadmin respistory, there was no .hg directory:
root#myshost:/var/lib/mercurial-server/repos# cd hgadmin/
root#myshost:/var/lib/mercurial-server/repos/hgadmin# ls -a
. ..
In order to resolve this, I did:
easy_install mercurial
sudo apt-get purge mercurial-server
sudo rm -rf /var/lib/mercurial-server
sudo apt-get install mercurial-server
And then continued on with the directions here:
http://kurtgrandis.com/blog/2010/03/20/gitosis-for-mercurial/

Answer 2

Thanks a lot Randy for exposing the exact issue here.
I struggled with the same problem, and found an alternative approach to solving it (without the need to purge and re-install).
You can initialize the hgadmin repo manually and install the hooks, achieving the same effect as a normal installation. You need to to it as 'hg' user though.
Procedure
The commands worked for my environment (Ubuntu 10.04.4 / Hg 1.4.3)
First initialise a mercurial repository in /var/lib/mercurial-server/repos/hgadmin :
$ sudo su hg
$ cd ~/repos/hgadmin/
$ hg init
Then the only difference I found with a normally initialized hgadmin repo (that I deployed in a VM for comparison) were the hooks in .hg/hgrc file. So open the file :
$ vim .hg/hgrc
and paste this exact content :
# WARNING: when these hooks run they will entirely destroy and rewrite
# ~/.ssh/authorized_keys
[extensions]
hgext.purge =
[hooks]
changegroup.aaaab_update = hg update -C default > /dev/null
changegroup.aaaac_purge = hg purge --all > /dev/null
changegroup.refreshauth = python:mercurialserver.refreshauth.hook

Answer 3

Are you sure your clone command syntax is correct? I see at least two errors in it:
You must put the repo you're cloning (not just the destination)
Just as for push, you must use two slashes before hgadmin:
Example FAILING (missing the source repo and using only one '/' before 'home')
$ hg clone ssh://John#127.0.0.1/home/John/delme
Example FAILING (missing the source repo)
$ hg clone . ssh://John#127.0.0.1/home/John/delme
Example SUCCEEDING:
$ hg clone . ssh://John#127.0.0.1//home/John/delme