problem using subversion (svn) with Apache http server and LDAP

My users decided to move from CVS to SVN, and they want to use centralized LDAP server for user authentication, I need to setup a test server for prove of concept test.
I found one no longer used server, and installed SVN packages as well as mod_dav_svn. The Apache HTTP server is already there.
After I configured Apache HTTP follow the document at http://svnbook.red-bean.com/nightly/en/svn.serverconfig.httpd.html#svn.serverconfig.httpd.prereqs , I tried to use subversion client to connect to it but failed. I checked http server log and found the request was sent to the wrong place:

# more error_log

......

[Wed May xx 16:07:36 2012] [error] [client 192.168.128.10] File does not exist: /var/www/html/repos

[Wed May xx 16:07:36 2012] [error] [client 192.168.128.10] File does not exist: /var/www/html/favicon.ico

[Wed May xx 16:07:49 2012] [error] [client 192.168.128.10] File does not exist: /var/www/html/repos

[Wed May xx 16:07:49 2012] [error] [client 192.168.128.10] File does not exist: /var/www/html/favicon.ico

............

and according to my configuration file, it should not go to /var/www/html/repos:

 # more /etc/httpd/conf.d/subversion.conf

LoadModule dav_svn_module     modules/mod_dav_svn.so

LoadModule authz_svn_module   modules/mod_authz_svn.so

<Location /repos>

        DAV svn

        SVNParentPath /var/www/svn

        AuthType Basic

        AuthName "xxxx SVN"

        AuthBasicProvider  ldap

        AuthLDAPURL "ldap://xxxxxx:389/ou=users,dc=xxxxxx,dc=com?uid?sub?(objectClass=*)"

        AuthzSVNAccessFile  /var/www/svn/access

        Require valid-user

</Location>

and any access to the URL should prompt for authentication but it didn't

had no clue after checked all the log files and tried different client, I started to think maybe the problem is Apache didn't read my configuration file. So I did a trace

# cd /tmp

# service httpd stop

# strace -o httpd.trace -f /usr/sbin/httpd  #####  to trace every system call from httpd

# grep "open" httpd.trace | grep "conf.d"    ##### to find out which file was read in conf.d directory

http.trace:open("/etc/httpd/conf.d/php.conf", O_RDONLY) = 4

http.trace:open("/etc/httpd/conf.d/php.conf", O_RDONLY) = 5

apparently, apache only load php.conf

so I looked into the main configuration file for the "include" directives:

# grep -i "include" /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf

LoadModule include_module modules/mod_include.so

Include conf.d/php.conf               ##### <<<------ here's the probem

I changed the line to

Include conf.d/*.conf 

and restart httpd server. Now when I access the URL http://servername/repos, my browser will prompt for username and password

to my surprise, if I exclude

AuthzSVNAccessFile  /var/www/svn/access

in /etc/httpd/conf.d/subversion.conf, I can have full access using any LDAP accounts, but if I include it, none of my account work (all of them will have access denied). the file  /var/www/svn/access looks like below:

# more /var/www/svn/access

[aliases]

test1= uid=test1,ou=users,dc=xxxx,dc=com

test2 = uid=test2,ou=users,dc=xxxx,dc=com

[groups]

dev= &test1, &test2

[projectA:/]

* = r

&test1 = rw

[projectB:/]

&test1 = r

@dev = rw

I made this file following the instructions at http://svnbook.red-bean.com/nightly/en/svn.serverconfig.pathbasedauthz.html. After a few test, it turned out the "&" is the problem,  somehow you don't need that,  after I changed the file to

# more /var/www/svn/access

[aliases]

test1= uid=test1,ou=is_team,ou=users,dc=xxxx,dc=com

test2 = uid=test2,ou=dev_team,ou=users,dc=xxxx,dc=com

[groups]

dev= test1, test2

[projectA:/]

* = r

test1 = rw

[projectB:/]

test1 = r

@dev = rw

everything works like expected.

my environment:

httpd-2.2.3-63.el5_8.1
mod_dav_svn-1.6.11-10.el5_8
subversion-1.6.11-10.el5_8