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I got into a similar situation (svn: 'papers' is not a working copy directory) a different way, so I thought I’d post my battle story (simplified):
(This article is from http://stackoverflow.com/questions/374313/svn-error-not-a-working-copy)
$ svn add papers
svn: Can't create directory 'papers/.svn': Permission denied
Oops! fix permissions… then:
$ svn add papers
svn: warning: 'papers' is already under version control
$ svn st
~ papers
$ svn cleanup
svn: 'papers' is not a working copy directory
And even moving papers out of the way and running svn up (which worked for the OP) didn’t fix it. Here’s what I did:
$ mv papers papers_
$ svn cleanup
$ svn revert papers
Reverted 'papers'
$ mv papers_/ papers
$ svn add papers
That worked.