View source for How To Password Protect Personal Web Content

From ECE Information Technology Services

← How To Password Protect Personal Web Content

You do not have permission to edit this page, for the following reason:

---

You can view and copy the source of this page.

You already know [[How To Publish Personal Web Content]], but you want to restrict web surfers' access to certain pages. This can be accomplished by requiring users to authenticate with the web server to access these password-protected pages. The HTTP protocol has the ability to prompt a user for a username and password. You can require users to enter the username/password of their departmental account or check the username/password against your own password file. Unfortunately, the HTTP authentication mechanism transmits this information unencrypted. Therefore you '''must''' enforce the use of HTTPS (HTTP+SSL) to protect the username/password between the web surfer's browser and the departmental web server, as instructed below. ==Directory Layout== First you need to set up an area in your document tree that you wish to make private. These instructions follow the convention that the <tt>~/etc/www/priv/</tt> directory is the one containing the password-protected content, but it could be any directory within the <tt>~/etc/www/</tt> document tree. {| |- ! File or Directory ! Minimum Filesystem Permissions ! Comment |- | <tt>~/</tt> | <tt>rwx--x--x</tt> (<tt>chmod a+x</tt>) | Your home directory |- | <tt>~/etc/</tt> | <tt>rwx--x--x</tt> (<tt>chmod a+x</tt>) | Your <tt>etc</tt> directory |- | <tt>~/etc/www/</tt> | <tt>rwx--x--x</tt> (<tt>chmod a+x</tt>) | Your document root |- | <tt>~/etc/www/index.html</tt> | <tt>rw-r--r--</tt> (<tt>chmod a+r</tt>) | Your public home page |- | <tt>~/etc/www/public.html</tt> | <tt>rw-r--r--</tt> (<tt>chmod a+r</tt>) | Another public document |- | <tt>~/etc/www/priv/</tt> | <tt>rwx--x--x</tt> (<tt>chmod a+x</tt>) | Directory for password-protected files |- | <tt>~/etc/www/priv/''protected''.html</tt> | <tt>rw-r--r--</tt> (<tt>chmod a+r</tt>) | A password-protected document |- | <tt>~/etc/www/priv/.htaccess</tt> | <tt>rw-r--r--</tt> (<tt>chmod a+r</tt>) | Apache config file |- | <tt>~/etc/www/priv/.htpasswd</tt> | <tt>rw-r--r--</tt> (<tt>chmod a+r</tt>) | Apache file for <tt>AuthUserFile</tt> |- | <tt>~/etc/www/priv/.htgroup</tt> | <tt>rw-r--r--</tt> (<tt>chmod a+r</tt>) | Apache file for <tt>AuthGroupFile</tt> |} All of these files need to have world-readable filesystem permissions (<tt>chmod a+r</tt>) and all of these directories need to be marked world-executable (<tt>chmod a+x</tt>) to allow the webserver to access them. The key to getting this setup to work is the <tt>.htaccess</tt> file in the <tt>priv</tt> directory. There are three basic variations for this file: ==Variation 1: Authenticate Departmental Users Only== Place an <tt>.htaccess</tt> file with the following contents in the directory you wish to protect: <tt> # Force the use of SSL...<br>SSLRequireSSL # ... and redirect non-SSL requests to the corresponding HTTPS URL<br>ErrorDocument 403 /cgi-bin/ssl-redirect # Use HTTP Basic Authentication<br>AuthType Basic # Validate usernames/passwords against the ECE account database<br>AuthBasicProvider ece # The AuthName is incorporated in the username/password prompt<br>AuthName "ECE Account" # Allow any authenticated user<br>Require valid-user </tt> You can restrict access to specific ECE users and groups by changing the <tt>Require valid-user</tt> line. For more information, see [[#The All-Important Require Directive|The All-Important <tt>Require</tt> Directive]] below. ==Variation 2: Authenticate Non-Departmental Users Only== With this <tt>.htaccess</tt> configuration, only users listed in your <tt>.htpasswd</tt> file may access the private pages. To create and manage your <tt>.htpasswd</tt> file, use the <tt>htpasswd</tt> command, which is available on the [[How To Use SSH |<tt>ssh.ece.ubc.ca</tt>]] machines. <tt> SSLRequireSSL<br> ErrorDocument 403 /cgi-bin/ssl-redirect<br> <br> AuthType Basic<br> AuthBasicProvider file<br> AuthUserFile ''path to home directory''/etc/www/priv/.htpasswd<br> AuthName "my private page"<br> Require valid-user<br> </tt> The <tt>AuthBasicProvider file</tt> line may be omitted. Please ensure that value for <tt>''path to home directory''</tt> that you use is identical to that reported by the command <tt>getent passwd ''username''</tt>. It must be a full path (starting with <tt>/ubc/ece/home/...</tt>; <tt>~''username''</tt> will not work. ==Variation 3: Authenticate Non-Departmental and Departmental Users== With this <tt>.htaccess</tt> configuration, the webserver will authenticate the user against both your <tt>.htpasswd</tt> file and the ECE account database. <tt> SSLRequireSSL<br> ErrorDocument 403 /cgi-bin/ssl-redirect<br> <br> AuthType Basic<br> AuthBasicProvider file ece<br> AuthName "ECE or Other Account"<br> AuthUserFile ''path to home directory''/etc/www/priv/.htpasswd<br> Require valid-user<br> </tt> ==The All-Important <tt>Require</tt> Directive== The <tt>Require</tt> directive is the means by which you can restrict access to your password-protected personal web content to a specific set of users. The following table of examples should help to understand how the directive can be used. {| |- ! To restrict access to... ! ... use this <tt>Require</tt> directive |- | any authenticated user | <tt>Require valid-user</tt> |- | specific users (e.g., <tt>lucaf</tt> and <tt>robr</tt>) | <tt>Require user lucaf robr</tt> |- | specific groups (e.g., <tt>robotics</tt>) | <tt><IfVersion < 2.4><br>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Require group robotics<br></IfVersion><br><IfVersion >= 2.4><br>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Require unix-group robotics<br></IfVersion></tt> |} For more information on the <tt>Require</tt> directives, please see http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.2/mod/core.html#require and http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.4/mod/mod_authz_core.html#require . ==See Also== * [http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.2/howto/auth.html Apache 2.2 Documentation] * [http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.4/howto/auth.html Apache 2.4 Documentation]

Return to How To Password Protect Personal Web Content.