Serving Directories with Authentication via Apache

Question

Yep, it really is that simple but it's driving me nuts.
We are setting up an xserve to serve customer data (directories with HTML pages). I'd like to be able to set up a folder for each customer, have them hit our server via http, be challenged for a username and password, and be able to view and browse thier folder contents.
I've poked around in server admin most of the day (spending a lot of time trying to set up realms with no luck), looked at the Web Technologies Administration document (following directions on page 43 with no luck), browsed the web and this forum and still don't see how I might do this.
Suggestions on where to look or specific advice would be greatly appreciated and sorry if this is so galactically simple and/or discussed an infinite number of times.
xerve g5 & others   Mac OS X (10.4.6)  

Answer 1

Welcome to discussions!
Server Admin does a pretty good job of making simple things hard, doesn't it? The only thing more useless is the performance cache.
Probably the easiest way, unless you have a VERY high volume server, to do what you want would be .htaccess files. In each of the folders that you want basic authentication for it's contents, create a folder with the name .htaccess . In .htaccess the following:
AuthType Basic
AuthName "What you want to appear in the popup window"
AuthUserFile /path/to/a/file/that/has/name/passwds
require valid-user
Check out the man page for htpasswd. It will help you make a name/password file for your .htaccess file to reference.
Roger