OK so they warned me. They moved to a new Linux platform, and Subversion stopped working.
I used my own instructions to rebuild. No good. Errors.
After some Googling I found an article by Nick Sergeant and he basically had the same routine. But he dumped 1&1. I can’t afford to now.
So I tried the latest subversion 1.4.6. Looks like it built. Will it update WordPress and Gallery?
WordPress: yes. Gallery: probably. Looks like we are in business.
Why can’t 1&1 at least provide a subversion client?
As of 9/16/2010, looks like 1&1 is now including a git client in their standard package – nice for local versioning, not so nice if WordPress does not use it – they don’t.