Nginx is one of the famous web server used for web hosting. In this tutorial, we will show you how to configure basic authentication on Nginx for your websites.
In this article, we will use htpasswd command line utility from Apache tools package to generate encrypted credentials file.
1. Install Apache Tools
First of all we need htpasswd command to create .htpasswd with encrypted login details. So let’s install apache tools to get the htpasswd command on your system.
Using Apt-Get:
sudo apt-get install apache2-utils
Using Yum:
yum install httpd-tools
2. Create Credentials File
Now we need to create an empty /etc/nginx/.htpasswd file if not exists.
touch /etc/nginx/.htpasswd
Above command will create new file or just change timestamp for existing file. Let’s start adding new users using below commands.
htpasswd -m /etc/nginx/.htpasswd user1 htpasswd -m /etc/nginx/.htpasswd user2
Note: -m is used for creating md5 encrypted passwords.
3. Edit Nginx Configuration
Now edit Nginx configuration file for your server block. Add following entry in the server block you need to authenticate.
server {
listen 80 default_server;
server_name _;
root /usr/share/nginx/html;
location / {
auth_basic "Restricted Area";
auth_basic_user_file /etc/nginx/.htpasswd;
}
}Update the location path to restrict specific application url of your web application.
location /restricted/ {
auth_basic "Restricted Area";
auth_basic_user_file /etc/nginx/.htpasswd;
}4. Reload Nginx Server
To implement these changes to your server configuration reload Nginx server using the following commands.
sudo /etc/init.d/nginx reload
systemctl users can also use the below command.
sudo systemctl reload nginx.service