authman 0.1

Copyright (C) 2002 Oliver Hitz

Introduction

authman is a simple script to manage your passwd and group files of directories protected by .htaccess files.

License

This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple Place - Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111-1307, USA.

Requirements

To use this script, you need a web server with PHP 4.0 or higher enabled. PHP requires read/write access to the place where your passwd and group files are stored.

Installation

Installation is pretty simple:

  1. Copy the authman directory into your web directory.
  2. Make sure that in your web directory (e.g. at the root) there exists a .htaccess file that contains an AuthUserfile and AuthGroupFile directive pointing to files that are readable and writable by PHP.
  3. Try to access the URL http://www.yourserver.com/authman. authman now searches for an .htaccess file to get the paths of the passwd and group files. If all goes well, you are presented with a simple web interface for editing users and groups. If something goes wrong, authman probably cannot find the .htaccess file.
  4. Important: As soon as authman works you need to secure the authman directory. Otherwise everybody may edit your users and passwords. To do this, create a group "authman" and place a user in it. Then edit the .htaccess file in the authman directory and uncomment all entries.
  5. Well done!

Warning

authman does not claim to be secure or to make your server secure! It is just a small script to make life easier. Do not use it for critical applications if you don't fully understand what it does!