Q:

Reshard existing large SVN repository

we have a a pretty large SVN repository (50 GB, Over 100000 revisions).  Working with it is pretty slow and my guess is that the reason for this is the flat directory structure in db/revs and db/revprops (Where each revision is one file). 
We use the FSFS format with SVN 1.5 (On a linux server) but the repo was created with an older SVN version.  Now I read that SVN 1.5 supports "sharding" and I understood that this feature distributes the revisions into multiple directories so a single directory doesn't contain so many files.  This sounds pretty useful but unfortunately it looks like this feature is only used with repositories which are freshly created with SVN 1.5. 
How can I convert a large existing linear repo to a sharded repo?  The manual mentions the tool "fsfs-reshard.py" but this script says  "This script is unfinished and not ready to be used on live data.  Trust us.".  So I definitely don't want to use that.  Is there an alternative? 

A:

Will an svnadmin dump and svnadmin load do the trick?   http://subversion.apache.org/faq.html#dumpload

A:

The best way is as mentioned dump/load cylcle.  But you can try the upgrade. 
svnadmin upgrade

Make a copy of your repo first try the upgrade and test it....(don't miss to make a backup).