Linux – How to access Unix passwd file from Apache when using .htaccess

We use this : http://sourceforge.net/projects/phppassmanager/ (a little bit modified/tuned)

It's installed on a HTTPS web server with Active Directory authentication to restrict password retrieval to our team. Each member of the team knows a master password used to encrypt all the passwords stored in phppassmanager. They use it when they want to add/modify/read a password. The passwords are stored encrypted in a mysql database.

They potentialy have access to all the passwords but each password decryption is loggued, and the logs are shown to the whole team on the main page. This system is self-monitored and self-managed.

Syntax is the same, but you have to make sure that you put your rules in the correct location within the httpd.conf file (or vhosts.conf or whatever is appropriate for your distro) depending on your requirements.

So if your rewrite rule is specific to a particular Virtual Host, then the rewrite rule would go in the container for that Virtual Host. If the rule is global (e.g. affects all sites), then you can put it anywhere in the httpd.conf file.

Documentation on mod_rewrite and context should be useful references for this. An Apache book is worth investing in if you will be doing a lot of this!

Out of interest, why do you want to avoid using .htaccess files for this? Changes in the .htaccess files are immediate, whereas changes in httpd.conf etc require apache restart to be effective.