and passwords before accessing pages in some directories. Authentication is
the process of checking if the password given is correct for a user. Apache
has standard modules for authenticating out of several different kinds of
databases. The external authentication module provides a flexible tool for
creating authentication systems based on other databases.
The module can be used in either of two somewhat divergent ways:
1) External Authentication:
When a user supplies a login and password, mod_auth*_external runs a program
you write, passing it the login and password. Your program does whatever
checking and logging it needs to, and then returns a Accept/Reject flag to
Apache.
2) Hardcoded Authentication:
Some hooks have been inserted into mod_auth*_external to make it easy to
replace the call to the external authentication program with a call to a
hardcoded internal authentication routine that you write.
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