Got this ?

svn: Unable to open an ra_local session to URL 
svn: Unable to open repository 'file:///svnroot/project' 
svn: Berkeley DB error while opening environment for filesystem /svnroot/db: 
Permission denied

Just open a read/write access to the repository, esp the db directory … something like (but more fine-grained than) chmod -R g+w /svnroot