Useless SVN Error Message: Network connection closed unexpectedly « Ben J. Christensen

This is VERY helpful if you're trying to use svn+ssh with an alternate port number and you get the vague message about the network connection closing unexpectedly:

Useless SVN Error Message: Network connection closed unexpectedly « Ben J. Christensen

Before you go there, however, if you have shell access on the remote host from which you're trying to check the project out, be sure to test locally:

svn list svn+ssh://username@localhost/path/to/project/repository

If you don't have a port number specified in ~/.ssh/config, you should first try:

svn list svn+ssh://username@localhost:1234/path/to/project/repository ('1234' in place of your port number)

If that doesn't work, open up ~/.ssh/config (you may need to create it) and enter this:

Host yourhost.com

User username

Port 1234

In the case of testing on localhost, I used this config file:

Host localhost

User myUsername

Port 1234

Literally use the host, "localhost."

Once I knew that worked, I could try remotely, at which point I got the seemingly meaningless error. So, I then created the config file on my local machine.

Good luck!