I'm trying to use DBM to authenticate from Apache, here is my configuration file:
<VirtualHost 142.25.97.241:80>
ServerName site5.servermonk.org
DocumentRoot /var/www/site5

<Directory "/var/www/site5/">

AuthType Basic
AuthName "Group 1 Check"
AuthDBMUserFile /var/www/database
AuthDBMGroupFile /var/www/database

<Limit GET POST>
Require group group-name groupA
</Limit>
</Directory>
</VirtualHost>

and i'm getting the error when logging in with user macphersonb

[Wed Nov 12 16:30:38 2008] [error] [client 142.25.97.6] access to / failed, reason: verification of user id 'macphersonb' not configured

Any ideas?

It's right there! Have you got any authentication mechanism, for example, LDAP, setup?

On the other hand, try adding the www or www-data or http user group to the user macphersonb.

Please fill in your profile, listing your distro, so we can tailor the answer for you.

Just re-read your OP:

Is macphersonb a member of groupA? Or listed in the file "AuthDBMUserFile /var/www/database"

Yeah, i used the perl script "dbmmanage" to add the users, and all of them are members of groupA

What's weird is that this error doesn't change, no matter what i do, if the database file is not there, or if it's empty i get the same "verification of user is not configured"

My distro changes from project to project, this project happens to be using centos v5

Is there an apache module that needs to be loaded?

Also, I notice that

are the same file for both user and group, is this the way it should be?

Upon further consultation with the instructor, it's been relieved that this part of the project is impossible with the tools available for this assignment. Dbmmanage has been deprecated and does not operate as expected with new Apache installations.

it -is- possible to do with htdbm, but that's another project.

Thank you for all your help!

Good stuff, glad you resolved it one way or the other.