Question

Modifying .htaccess to allow some users access to specific files while others have full access

Asked by: bradderick

Hello!

First off, thanks for having a read through my question :)

I'm trying to modify my .htaccess file so that one of our users can access 4 of our pages in the admin section  while the rest of our users have access to the whole admin section.

I've read lots of tutorials on this but couldn't find details on how to specify a user with different details.

I'd like all of our regular administrators with usernames: bob, joe, rachel to have access to all of the admin section (once they login) however, i want the new administrator (james) to have access only to the following files:
- admin.cgi
- modify-data.cgi
- delete-data.cgi

(all these files are under the admin directory which is where the .htaccess file is). The username 'james' (no quotes) has been added to the .htpasswd file.

So far my .htaccess file looks like this:

--begin--
AuthUserFile   /path/to/.htpasswd
AuthGroupFile  /dev/null
AuthType       Basic
AuthName       Protected

require valid-user
--end--

So you can see, at the moment it protects the entire directory and once logged in administrators can access everything.

If you've got some time, any help you can offer would be much appreciated!

Cheers,
Brad

AuthUserFile   /path/to/.htpasswd
AuthGroupFile  /dev/null
AuthType       Basic
AuthName       Protected
 
require valid-user

                                  
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Asked On
2008-08-31 at 17:33:53ID23692675
Tags

Apache

,

htaccess

Topic

Apache Web Server

Participating Experts
1
Points
500
Comments
4

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Answers

 

by: caterham_wwwPosted on 2008-08-31 at 17:43:17ID: 22356927

I think this can be solved with mod_rewrite:

AuthUserFile   /path/to/.htpasswd
# If you don't have a group file, you don't need the directive AuthGroupFile 
AuthType       Basic
AuthName       Protected
 
require valid-user
 
RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{REMOTE_USER} =james
# if the request is not ...cgi (inside of the folder where the .htaccess is located,) return with 403 forbidden
RewriteRule !^(admin|modify-data|delete-data)\.cgi$ - [F]

                                              
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by: bradderickPosted on 2008-08-31 at 18:02:51ID: 22356970

Thanks for the super quick reply. That looks great - in setting this up i just noticed that a couple of our admin pages have url variables after them in order to specify which page should load.

So for example, i would like james to have access to:

admin.cgi?do=page&page=tools_validate_changes.html
admin.cgi?&do=modify_search_form&.......

but i do not want him to have access to:

admin.cgi?page=home_nav.html (it should return either a 403 or just return a blank page - as it's used in a frameset)

Is it possible to use the mod_rewrite code to specify url variable names and their contents in order to further control this access?

 

by: caterham_wwwPosted on 2008-09-01 at 02:29:58ID: 22358626

It is easier to use two rules in this case.

RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{REMOTE_USER} =james
RewriteRule !^(modify-data|delete-data)\.cgi$ - [F]
 
RewriteCond %{REMOTE_USER} =james
RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} page=home_nav\.html
RewriteRule ^admin\.cgi$ - [F]

                                              
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by: bradderickPosted on 2008-09-05 at 22:25:20ID: 22406193

Awesome, thanks for the help!!

Have a great weekend!

20120131-EE-VQP-002

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