1. User overrides are disabled. .htaccess is therefore ignored. Check httpd.conf to see if it's disabled:
I did spend the night, so to speak, at apache.org reading directives until the sun came up.
When this directive is set to None, then .htaccess files are completely ignored. In this case, the server will not even attempt to read .htaccess files in the filesystem. <-- I think this is what's happening, M.
Thanks, again. I'm not sure this is it because it does read the .htaccess file and my Realm description changes as I change the .htaccess file. Also the user/password alert box pops up faithfully as well. I suppose all this mostly confirms what I needed to know: 1. there are only 3 files to play with (httpd.conf, .htaccess, .htpasswd) 2. my installation is hosed It's blasphemy, but I guess I'm gonna do a clean install to rid the evil spirits. I'm also running Cold Fusion 5 server, so I'll try .htaccess before I install the CF server, though I don't know why they would not play nice together. While I'm doing my minimal install, is there anything I should be sure to install? The only other things I installed above minimal install are: binutils, compat, bison, flex, ftpdir, gcc, glibc-devel, make, mod_perl, mod_php4, mod_php4_core, mod_ssl, mysql, mysql_client, mysql_devel, mysql_shared, phplib, proftpd. This seems to give me a functioning webserver with mySQL & PHP4. I need "compat" to install CF5. Thanks everyone! PS I'm a video/graphics guy- this Linux thing is a hobby run wild. I've been deploying SuSE Linux in my art shop (SAMBA, netalk, ipchains, ssh2, 3ware raids), but will always admit my admin skillz are hack at best. I was smiling and heaping praise (esp using ssh2 on a W2k machine!) before all this mental torture kicked in.