Apache User Authentication

Apache has been the most popular web server on the Internet since April of 1996. The Netcraft February 2000 Web Server Survey found that over 58% of the web sites on the Internet are using Apache, thus making it more widely used than all other web servers combined. This success can be attributed to the fact that Apache provides a robust and commercial-grade reference implementation of the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP). Also, it is reliable, configurable, highly scalable, well documented, open source and free.

First, you must have Apache and the htpasswd utility installed on your Linux machine. If you do not, you can download the latest copy of Apache (version 1.3.12 is available now) from the Apache Organization web site and install it on your machine. htpasswd comes with Apache.

Figure 1. Sending User Credentials

Authentication is a simple yet very important principle—the client sends its name and password to the server (see Figure 1). Apache checks if the credentials are valid, and if so, returns the requested page (see Figure 2).

Figure 2. Access is Granted

If the user is not allowed to access the page or the supplied password is not valid, Apache returns a 401 status (i.e., unauthorized access). The browser will then ask the user to retry their user name and password (see Figure 3).

Figure 3. Failed Access

Restricting access to documents is usually done based on either the host name of the browser or user credentials (user name and password). The decision to adopt either method depends on your environment settings. For example, if you want to restrict documents within a limited environment such as a department, you can use the client host name. Otherwise, if you want to grant access on an individual basis, or if the people who are allowed access are dispersed, you would then require a user name and a password.

In order to set user authentication using a user name and a password, we need to follow two steps. First, we create a file containing the user names and passwords. Then, we inform the server which resources are to be protected and which users are allowed to access them.

The first step towards configuring authentication is to set up a list of users and their corresponding passwords. This list is saved in a file called, for example, users. This file should not be saved under the root directory for security reasons. Therefore, for my setup, I saved it under /etc/httpd. For an organized setting, you can create a directory under /etc/httpd, perhaps called users-files, and save the file in it. The file format is similar to the standard UNIX password file, consisting of a list of user names and an encrypted password for each, separated by a colon.

htpasswd is a utility supplied with the Apache package that allows us to create a user's file containing user passwords in order to add or modify them. On my machine, powered by Red Hat 6.1, Apache 1.3.9 and htpasswd were installed as part of the standard installation. To see how htpasswd works, type htpasswd at the shell prompt and the following messages will be returned:

Usage:
htpasswd [-cmdps] passwordfile username<\n>
htpasswd -b[cmdps] passwordfile username password
-c Create a new file.<\n>
-m Force MD5 encryption of the password.
-d Force CRYPT encryption of the password (default).
-p Do not encrypt the password (plaintext).
-s Force SHA encryption of the password.
-b Use the password from the command line rather than prompting for it.
On Windows and TPF systems the '-m' flag is used by default.
On all other systems, the '-p' flag will probably not work.

According to the usage statement, to create a new users file and add the user ibrahim to the file /etc/httpd/users, we type the following command:

htpasswd -c -b /etc/httpd/users ibrahim LJ*2000-ih

Sample User Password File

After I created a “web account” for myself, I added a few other accounts and my /etc/httpd/users file looked like:

ibrahim:40gvm/lYXsk4a
chady:XygEnj0pSDx9A
julie:3zwRhLJDrr/9s
carla:IfPYPtrekJLxE
karine:jeM9XkbalFaTA