This is the Nginx equivalent to basic HTTP authentication on Apache with .htaccess /.htpasswd.

We need a password file where users that should be able to log in are listed with their passwords (in encrypted form).

To create such a password file, we can either use Apache's htpasswd tool, or we use the Python script from http://trac.edgewall.org/browser/trunk/contrib/htpasswd.py.

If you want to use Apache's htpasswd command, check if it exists on your system:

which htpasswd

Will return something like this is the htpassed command exists on the system.

/usr/bin/htpasswd

If the command returns without any output, htpasswd does not exist on your system, and you must install it.

On Debian/Ubuntu, it's part of the apache2-utils package which we can install as follows:

sudo apt install apache2-utils

Create the password file /var/www/www.example.com/.htpasswd now and store the user john in it (you can give the password file any name you like - it's not necessary to name it .htpasswd;

For example, I just named it .htpasswd because that's the way password files are named under Apache:

htpasswd -c /var/www/www.example.com/.htpasswd john

You will be asked for a password for the user john.

Please note that the -c switch makes that the file is created from scratch; if it didn't exist before, it will be created; if it existed before, it will be overwritten with a new one, and all users from the old file will be lost!

Therefore, if you want to add another user without deleting all existing users, use the htpasswd command without the -c switch:

htpasswd /var/www/www.example.com/.htpasswd jack

The last command adds the user jack to /var/www/www.example.com/.htpasswd so that we now have the users john and jack in it.

If you don't want to or cannot use Apache's htpasswd command, you can use the Python script from http://trac.edgewall.org/browser/trunk/contrib/htpasswd.py.

We download it to /usr/local/bin and make it executable as follows:

cd /usr/local/bin
wget http://trac.edgewall.org/export/14464/trunk/contrib/htpasswd.py
chmod 755 /usr/local/bin/htpasswd.py

Create the password file /var/www/www.example.com/.htpasswd now and store the user john in it (you can give the password file any name you like - it's not necessary to name it .htpasswd; I just named it .htpasswd because that's the way password files are named under Apache):

htpasswd.py -c -b /var/www/www.example.com/.htpasswd john johnssecret

Please replace johnssecret with a password for the user john. Please note that the -c switch makes that the file is created from scratch; if it didn't exist before, it will be created; if it existed before, it will be overwritten with a new one, and all users from the old file will be lost! Therefore, if you want to add another user without deleting all existing users, use the htpasswd.py command without the -c switch:

htpasswd.py -b /var/www/www.example.com/.htpasswd jack jackssecret

The last command adds the user jack to /var/www/www.example.com/.htpasswd so that we now have the users john and jack in it.

Now that we have our password file in place, we just need to add it to our Nginx vhost configuration in /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/www.example.com, inside the server {} container.

vi /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/www.example.com

Because I want to password-protect the test directory in the document root, I use location /test {} here (to password-protect the whole website, you'd use location / {}):

/etc/nginx/sites-enabled/www.example.com

server {
       listen 80;
       server_name www.example.com example.com;
       root /var/www/www.example.com/web;
[...]
       location /test {
                auth_basic "Restricted";
                auth_basic_user_file /var/www/www.example.com/.htpasswd;
       }
[...]
}

service nginx reload

That's it!

You can now go to your test directory in a browser (http://www.example.com/test), and you should be asked for a username and password:

If you enter the correct username and password, you'll be granted access.

Otherwise, you will see a 401 Authorization Required error message.