====== How to do HTTP basic auth through a reverse proxy ? ======

On the back-end apache server, enable a basic auth in your apache server:
<code apache>
<Directory /web/space>
  AuthUserFile /out/of/web/space/htpasswd
  AuthGroupFile /dev/null
  AuthName "Identify"
  AuthType Basic
  <Limit GET POST>
    require valid-user
  </Limit>
</Directory>
</code>

Then create your ''/out/of/web/space/htpasswd'' file:
<code>
htpasswd -c /out/of/web/space/htpasswd back-end_login
</code>

Then on the reverse proxy, you can force a basic auth HTTP authentication just by adding a specific header  (you need ''mod_headers''):

<code apache>
RequestHeader set Authorization "Basic XXXXX"
</code>

XXXXX can be calculated this way using a simple shell command:
<code bash>
echo -n "back-end_login:back-end_password" | base64
</code>

Then when accessing the proxyfied server the client will not have to authenticate because the reverse proxy will do it itself.



{{tag>article computing reverse-proxy apache http authentication}}
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