Why won't Subversion remember certificates?

I'm using Terminal and committing some data to a remote SVN server... every time I get the same message about a new certificate, and I choose to "permanently" accept the cert and it works. However, the next time I commit... same thing. Why isn't the cert being remembered, and how can I fix this?

flat:smarty e$ svn commit ./ -m commit

Error validating server certificate for 'https://x.svn.x.com:443':
 - The certificate is not issued by a trusted authority. Use the
   fingerprint to validate the certificate manually!

Certificate information:
 - Hostname: *.svn.x.com
 - Valid: from Mon, 11 Jul 2011 00:00:00 GMT until Fri, 07 Sep 2012 12:00:00 GMT
 - Issuer: www.digicert.com, DigiCert Inc, US
 - Fingerprint: 3f:97:e9:1f:5c:3e:a9:fb:86:5d:4e:ed:6c:9a:1f:63:a4:f8:25:0a
(R)eject, accept (t)emporarily or accept (p)ermanently? p

Committed revision 19.

This doesn't sound like a Terminal problem, but a subversion and/or permissions problem. Did it work at one point in the past, or has it always been a problem?

Most likely the issue is somewhere inside of ~/.subversion/auth/. You could try blowing away the directory, though that will require you to recreate all your credentials. (Maybe something in there is borking up authentication process.)

I suggest you try to recreate your problem with another user profile, computer, or operating system, and compare ~/.subversion directories with your broken system.

If you are convinced its the Terminal's fault, you can try iTerm2, though I expect the same results in the same environment. Good luck!

I've had the same issue, all files in ~/.subversion/auth/svn.ssl.server/ were set to read-only.

Running chmod u+w ~/.subversion/auth/svn.ssl.server/* fixed it.