I succesfully installed Apache and got it runnig for several days. Now I tried to make one directory password protected.

I made a .htaccess-file
AuthUserFile /var/www/temp/.htpasswd
AuthGroupFile /dev/null
AuthName "Saved"
AuthType Basic
<Limit GET>
require user username
</Limit>

and then
/usr/local/apache/bin/htpasswd -c .htpasswd username
while being in the "temp" directory.
After doing those things the apache doesn´t respond while trying to access with a web browser. It just gives me the timeout message. Apache is running and restarted several times after the unlucky configuring, nothing helps. Hope you guys might know what´s wrong with it.

My wild guess is that your newly created .htaccess file is denying apache access to the /tmp directory. Remove it from /tmp and restart apache..?

[edit]ok.. ehm.. whoops, didn't read your post all too well

Isn't there anything in the log (/var/log/httpd/error_log ?) about this?
[/edit]

Did you set the allow override directive for that directory

AllowOverride AuthConfig

can you give us a bigger exerpt of you httpd.conf file

Well, I got it running again, but it doesn't accept my passwd. I do have

<Directory /var/www/temp>
AllowOverride AuthConfig
</Directory>

added to my httpd.conf file

Actually when I type my password incorrectly it just asks again, but when I get it right, I get message like this:


Forbidden
You don't have permission to access /temp/ on this server.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Apache/1.3.27 Server at xxxxxxxxxxxxxx.org Port 80

Is there something wrong with my file permissions, the directory is owned by the user trying to access it through web browser?

Check apache's error_log.

Thanks for everybody, I got it running. The problem was a missing index.html because I wanted to get a directory listning w/o any webpage. Didn't figure that out yet, but at least it's working in a sort of way I wanted.... If one of you guys know how to get the directory listning, I'd be most willing to hear how to do it.