Below are notes by Troy about the setup of the svn server being used (temporarily) to host the UbuntuInstantServer development Source.

Recommended changes for Instant Server:
 *Update package to:
  *create user automatically (svn-data)?
  *create a repository directory automatically (/var/svn-repositories)?
  *include /etc/rc?.d scripts for start/stop, etc.

 *Configuration System:
  *allow user to select a path to use as initial import - this path could include arbitrary locations from a network, disk, other repos, etc.
  *allow a user to select access and auth permissions, and manage svn usernames/passwords
----
To install svn as a server, I had to do the following:
{{{
$sudo apt-get install subversion
$sudo adduser
}}}
add a user specifically for svn serving, serving from root is bad, and the deb package did not 
install a user -- called the user 'ubuntu-server', then changed to this user

This created a directory /home/ubuntu-server/
I created a dedicated folder for the svn repository
{{{
$mkdir /home/ubuntu-server/svn-repo/
}}}
In retrospect, this would be better served from a folder such as /var/svn-repositories/ or somesuch
and the user created to host should not get a /home/ folder.  The above is a shortcoming of the existing subversion packages that should be dealt with automatically.

I had to issue to following commands to set up the repository:
{{{
$ svnadmin create /home/ubuntu-server/svn-repo

$ mkdir /tmp/svn/
$ touch /tmp/svn/dummy_file

$ svn import /tmp/svn file:////home/ubuntu-server/svn-repo -m "initial import"
}}}
I then had to edit /home/ubuntu-server/svn-repo/passwd to reflect as follows:
{{{
[users]
ubuntu-server = [password removed]
}}}
and had to edit /home/ubuntu-server/svn-repo/svnserve.conf as follows:
{{{
[general]
anon-access = read
auth-access = write
password-db = passwd
realm = Ubuntu-server
}}}
And lastly, 
{{{
$ svnserve -d -r /home/ubuntu-server/svn-repo/ 
}}}
starts the server and sends it into the background