svnserve.conf: Option expected

If you get this error when trying to checkout an SVN repository you likely have whitespace before one of the settings in the svnserve.conf file the path in the error refers to. There should be a number in the error, which will tell you what line the whitespace is on.

For instance, the following error is given if I remove the hash from the beginning of the passwd line and leave the whitespace there between the beginning of the line and the start of the option.

svnserve.conf:20: Option expected