How to protect a directory with '/etc/passwd'

Using Linux users to create access permissions on Apache

[guarriman]

Hi.

Using Apache/2.0.52 on Linux, I want to protect a directory by using
my '/etc/passwd' file and modifying 'httpd.conf':

-------------
<Directory "/home/website/htmldocs">
Options Indexes +FollowSymLinks
AllowOverride All
AuthUserFile /etc/passwd
AuthType Basic
AuthName "Protected"
require user joe
</Directory>
-------------

As supposed, it doesn't work. But, is there any way to use
'/etc/passwd' to protect a directory?

Thx.

[jdMorgan]

guarriman,

About all I can think of is to recomend that you read the Apache Authentication, Authorization, and Access Control [webmasterworld.com] documentation, and see if that may help.

Jim