N3RD

Logging in on a site using apache can be done in a lot of different ways e.g. .htpasswd or mysql. All of them have one thing in common: you get yet another password. What I wanted to accomplish is to be able to login using my normal Ubuntu username/password. This makes it a lot easier to change my password once in a while.

The first step is to install the required applications:

sudo apt-get install libapache2-mod-authz-unixgroup pwauth

Enable the apache module:

sudo a2enmod authnz_external

Edit the appropriate apache site in /etc/apache2/sites-available, make sure the site is only available over SSL otherwise you password will travel over the Internet unencrypted!

AddExternalAuth pwauth /usr/sbin/pwauth
SetExternalAuthMethod pwauth pipe

<location /sickbeard/>
    order deny,allow
    deny from all
    allow from all

    ProxyPass http://localhost:8081/sickbeard/
    ProxyPassReverse http://localhost:8081/sickbeard/

    AuthType Basic
    AuthName "Boaz' Sick Beard"
    AuthBasicProvider external
    AuthExternal pwauth
    Require valid-user
</location>

Finally restart apache and you're ready to go!

sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 restart