Suppose, for example, that you wanted to put some of /etc under version control inside your repository:
# svn mkdir <a href="///root/svn-repository/etc" title="///root/svn-repository/etc">file:///root/svn-repository/etc</a> \
-m "Make a directory in the repository to correspond to /etc"
# cd /etc
# svn checkout <a href="///root/svn-repository/etc" title="///root/svn-repository/etc">file:///root/svn-repository/etc</a> .
# svn add apache samba alsa X11
# svn commit -m "Initial version of my config files"