Once SVN is installed on the server execute the following.

$ cd /path/to/svn/repos
$ svnadmin create repositoryname

Change the owner of the repository directory and files.

$ chown -R www-data:subversion repositoryname

Initialize the repository with the basic directory structure. For this I use a shell script svninit that I created and put in /usr/bin with the other SVN tools.

#!/bin/bash
url=http://localhost/svn
svn mkdir $url/$1/trunk $url/$1/branches $url/$1/tags -m "New project $1" --parents

Update the url to point to your SVN installation.

Run the command like this:

$ svninit repositoryname

On the client, check out the new repository. I use TortoiseSVN so I created the directory, right click and select "SVN Checkout…". Select the repository "http://host/svn/repositoryname".