htaccess , htpasswd and error 401

htaccess , htpasswd and error 401 - .htaccess files are extremely useful in many cases for users who either do not have root permissions or for users who simply aren't comfortable in making changes in their web server's configuration file. Trying to debug .htaccess not working isn't always the easiest thing to do, however, hopefully by checking the discuss below mentioned about htaccess, authentication, htpasswd, , .htaccess common problems as well as the troubleshooting tips, you'll have a better grasp on what you may have to modify to get your .htaccess file running smoothly.Problem :

I have a problem with htpasswd.

I get an error in error.log apache2

user admin: authentication failure for "/": Password Mismatch

Content of my htaccess file:

# Set Access Restrictions

AuthType Basic
AuthName "admin"
AuthUserFile ".htpasswd"
require valid-user

and content of my htpasswd

admin:xxxxx

Solution :

From your comment I take it that you just created a plain text password. This will not work for Apache, as Apache expects the password in .htpasswd to be hashed by the MD5 algorithm.

There are several tools available online for generating .htpasswd files, but the easiest might be the one that comes with Apache, it's called htpasswd. On RHEL (Fedora, Red Hat, CentOS) systems you'll need the httpd-tools package (yum install httpd-tools). On Ubuntu systems it's in the apache2-utils package (apt-get install apache2-utils). If you're using XAMPP on Windows it's in the folder xamppapachebin.

To use htpasswd with the .htaccess file you've already got configured, you'd simply do htpasswd /protected/.htpasswd user and then type in your desired password (twice) when prompted. It will then generate your .htpasswd file in the /protected/ directory.

Make sure that you are including the entire path for AuthUserFile. I would suggest that you create a protected directory instead of doing this on the root directory. I made sure and tested these configurations to ensure that they worked.

File Locations

/protected/.htaccess
/protected/.htpasswd

.htaccess File

AuthType Basic
AuthName "restricted area"
AuthUserFile /protected/.htpasswd
require valid-user

. htpasswd File

user:password

Make sure that the password is MD5'd, here is a tool.

Finally, I have not hash a password to md5 .... I've used notepad ++ and I put the password in simple character

I followed this tutorial with the linux command for create file htaccess

now my content of my htpasswd :

admin:$apr1$Oy4JMDb0$yb00PbzV9mrq07lPivrzL1

Additionally, if you would like to do some further testing, give the htaccess tester tool a try. It allows you to specify a certain URL as well as the rules you would like to include and then shows which rules were tested, which ones met the criteria, and which ones were executed.