SVN checkout from local repository

Since my personal repository is hosted on a win server at my university, I use rsync to copy the repository locally on macs. This avoids the hassle of trying to figure out how to use a smb URL with svn.

During the process of moving to a new machine, I copied the repository on this machine, and tried to checkout :

muredubo$ svn co /Users/muredubo/rsynRep/ /Users/muredubo/svnSandBox/

svn: '/Users/muredubo/rsynRep' does not appear to be a URL

What I had just forgotten is that even a local repository must be accessed as a URL. This means using file:/// with the critical triple slash (I had searched for it long ago, and can't remenber now who I am to thank for this trick). The command:

muredubo$ svn co file:///Users/muredubo/rsynRep/ /Users/muredubo/svnSandBox/

created my sandbox without a glitch.