Creating Password Protected Directories
What you are trying to do is called "user authentication". The
best place to learn about user authentication is from the source (NCSA).
They have a very easy to understand tutorial at the following URL:
http://hoohoo.ncsa.uiuc.edu/docs/tutorials/user.html
You should be aware of one subtle difference with the Virtual Server System--
when you set up your .htaccess files, you will specify the AuthUserFile or AuthGroupFile with respect to your home directory.
However, when you set up your .htpasswd files with the htpasswd
command you will need to prepend /usr/home/[login_name]
to the directory specification.
NOTE: If you will be authenticating
thousands of users, or more, you should consider DBM
User Authentication which works much faster and more efficiently
with a larger number of users.
For example, let's say you have a subdirectory billy in your
~/www/htdocs directory. You would like to restrict access to this
directory. This can be done by first creating a .htaccess file
in the billy subdirectory such as the following:
AuthUserFile /etc/.htpasswd
AuthGroupFile /dev/null
AuthName Bill's Restaurant
AuthType Basic
<Limit GET>
require user William
</Limit>
This .htaccess file will only allow one user, "William", to access
the directory billy; provided the correct password is given. The
password is to be stored in the /etc/.htpasswd file (see the AuthUserFile
declaration in the .htaccess file above).
To set up the password for "William" issue the following command:
% htpasswd -c /usr/home/[login]/etc/.htpasswd William
Use the htpasswd command without the -c flag to add additional users; e.g.:
% htpasswd /usr/home/[login]/etc/.htpasswd peanuts
% htpasswd /usr/home/[login]/etc/.htpasswd almonds
% htpasswd /usr/home/[login]/etc/.htpasswd walnuts
NOTE: To run the htpasswd command correctly, you will need to prepend the
/usr/home/[login_name] path to the password file specification (substitute your login name
for [login_name]). You do not need to use the /usr/home/[login_name] path in the
.htaccess file.
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