Anonymous Access (Apache: The Definitive Guide, 3rd Edition)

5.12. Anonymous Access

It sometimes happens that even though you have passwords controlling the access to certain things on your site, you also want to allow guests to come and sample the site's joys — probably a reduced set of joys, mediated by the username passed on by the client's browser. The Apache module mod_auth_anon.c allows you to do this.

We have to say that the whole enterprise seems rather silly. If you want security at all on any part of your site, you need to use SSL. If you then want to make some of the material accessible to everyone, you can give them a different URL or a link from a reception page. However, it seems that some people want to do this to capture visitors' email addresses (using a long-standing convention for anonymous access), and if that is what you want, and if your users' browsers are configured to provide that information, then here's how.

The module should be compiled in automatically — check by looking at Configuration or by running httpd -l. If it wasn't compiled in, you will probably get this unnerving error message:

Invalid command Anonymous

when you try to exercise the Anonymous directive. The Config file in ... /site.anon/conf/httpd.conf is as follows:

User webuser
Group webgroup
ServerName www.butterthlies.com

IdentityCheck	on
NameVirtualHost 192.168.123.2

<VirtualHost www.butterthlies.com>
ServerAdmin sales@butterthlies.com
DocumentRoot /usr/www/APACHE3/site.anon/htdocs/customers
ServerName www.butterthlies.com
ErrorLog /usr/www/APACHE3/site.anon/logs/customers/error_log
TransferLog /usr/www/APACHE3/site.anon/logs/access_log
ScriptAlias /cgi-bin /usr/www/APACHE3/cgi-bin
</VirtualHost>

<VirtualHost sales.butterthlies.com>
ServerAdmin sales_mgr@butterthlies.com
DocumentRoot /usr/www/APACHE3/site.anon/htdocs/salesmen
ServerName sales.butterthlies.com
ErrorLog /usr/www/APACHE3/site.anon/logs/error_log
TransferLog /usr/www/APACHE3/site.anon/logs/salesmen/access_log
ScriptAlias /cgi-bin /usr/www/APACHE3/cgi-bin

<Directory /usr/www/APACHE3/site.anon/htdocs/salesmen>
AuthType Basic
AuthName darkness

AuthUserFile /usr/www/APACHE3/ok_users/sales
AuthGroupFile /usr/www/APACHE3/ok_users/groups

require valid-user
Anonymous guest anonymous air-head
Anonymous_NoUserID on
</Directory>

</VirtualHost>

Run go and try accessing http://sales.butterthlies.com /. You should be asked for a password in the usual way. The difference is that now you can also get in by being guest, air-head , or anonymous. You may have to type something in the password field. The Anonymous directives follow.

Anonymous

Anonymous userid1 userid2 ...

The user can log in as any user ID on the list, but must provide something in the password field unless that is switched off by another directive.

Anonymous_NoUserID

Anonymous_NoUserID [on|off]
Default: off
directory, .htaccess

If on, users can leave the ID field blank but must put something in the password field.

Anonymous_LogEmail

Anonymous_LogEmail [on|off]
Default: on
directory, .htaccess

If on, accesses are logged to ... /logs/httpd_log or to the log set by TransferLog.

Anonymous_VerifyEmail

Anonymous_VerifyEmail [on|off]
Default: off
directory, .htaccess

The user ID must contain at least one "@" and one ".".

Anonymous_Authoritative

Anonymous_Authoritative [on|off]
Default: off
directory, .htaccess

If this directive is on and the client fails anonymous authorization, she fails all authorization. If it is off, other authorization schemes will get a crack at her.

Anonymous_MustGiveEmail

Anonymous_MustGiveEmail [on|off]
Default: on
directory, .htaccess

The user must give an email ID as a password.