After a lot more poking around, it turned out to be the fault of the server I was trying to clone. The svnserve error message came from remote svnserve, not the local one.
-- subversion 1.4.3 linked against old expat so https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/132036 You received this bug notification because you are a member of Ubuntu Bugs, which is the bug contact for Ubuntu. -- ubuntu-bugs mailing list ubuntu-bugs@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-bugs