Simple Password Protection
One of the most commonly asked questions is how to password protect a directory on an individual account. Please read the
following information to setup password protection on your account. Note: you should have an understanding of certain UNIX
commands to properly setup. If you do not, click back and read through the UNIX tutorial section if you do not know how to
telnet or run the unix commands listed below.
You will need to determine what directory you want password protected. Once you have determined this, use your telnet program
to log onto the server. use the cd command to go to the directory you wish to password protect. If the directory does not exist yet,
use the mkdir command to create a new directory and cd into it.
Two files are necessary for password protecting the directory. These files are .htaccess
and .htpasswd.
From the prompt, type pico .htaccess. This opens the editor. you now need to write the file.
Below is an example of what the .htaccess file will look like. For the example, we will
use xxxsite as the account name and secret as the directory to protect.
You will need to replace the "xxxsite" and the "secret" with your account name and the directory you want to protect.
Naturally, if you choose to put your .htpasswd file somewhere else, you simply change the first line to reflect the full
path. Now that you have entered the above here, hit ctrl+x to exit. It will ask if you want to save or not. Choose yes and
then hit enter. Your .htaccess file has now been written.
Now we are ready to create the .htpasswd file. Simply type touch .htpasswd
from the telnet prompt. You have created your .htpasswd file.
For your final steps, you need to create one more file using the pico command. This file, called
addpw will be your tool for adding new users to the .htpasswd file. Decide where you want to
have this file located and move to that directory. Type pico addpw to begin creating the
file. You can simply do a cut and paste with the info below.
Now that you copied the information, hit ctrl+x to exit. Choose yes to save and hit enter. You have now completed all
three files needed. Next we need to set the permissions correctly. You will need to chmod 700 addpw
from the directory your addpw file is located. This will make the file executable by you alone. If you created all three of
these files in the same directory you will be able to see them by typing ls -al from the prompt.
Your directory should look something like this after typing the ls command:
You are now ready to add a new login and password. from the same directory the addpw file is located, type in:
./addpw .htpasswd login passwd
Replace login and passwd with the login and password you want created. If your .htpasswd file is located in a different
directory, be sure to type the full path to the .htpasswd file. here is an example:
./addpw /usr/home/xxxsite/public_html/secret/.htpasswd login passwd
Either way, the output you should get will be the following if setting up a login xxxsite with a password of myporn:
Thats it! Test it out, you should be asked for a login and password and allowed access with a correct login/password if you did everything correctly.
