newbie.help - .htaccess

this really shouldn't be a difficult issue but for some reason it is i'm trying to get apache to restrict access to a directory so i created a password file with htpasswd -c .... then i put a .htaccess file in to be protected directory with the following in it: AuthUserFile /usr/local/httpd/users AuthGroupFile /dev/null AuthName "secure area" AuthType Basic require valid-user then i went into apache's httpd.conf and edited the <directory> lines Options Indexes -FollowSymlinks +Includes MultiViews AllowOverride All Order allow,deny Allow from all </Directory> the problem is the directory is ALWAYS protected regardless of whether i enter the right user/pass and the error log feeds me the following: username: not a valid FDN i'm running apache 1.3.19 on SuSE 7.2 thanks - dan