When attempting to do an svn export of a single file using a version of the subversion client prior to 1.2.0 you’ll get the following error :

[userathost ~]$ svn export http://svnserver/svn/project/directory/filename
svn: REPORT request failed on '/svn/project/!svn/vcc/default'
svn:
Cannot replace a directory from within

This is caused by a bug which was fixed and released in subversion version 1.2.0

Unfortunately, RHEL4 (Redhat Enterprise Linux 4) / CentOS 4 use subversion 1.1.4 ( subversion-1.1.4-2.ent ) from 2005 which doesn’t have this fix.

Upgrade to a newer version of subversion using dag rpms or David Summers rpms or CollabNet rpms