I just installed Apache Web Server on Ubuntu 11.04 in VMWare Workstation. I created a basic HTML page, named it index.html and placed it in /var/www directory (document root).

I am able to access this web page from my Host OS (Windows 7), by pointing the browser to:

http://192.168.2.2/index.html

where, 192.168.2.2 is the IP Address of the Ubuntu VM.

Next, to test various configurations of .htaccess files, I created a new directory in /var/www called, members.

Inside this directory, I created and placed a .htaccess file with the following configuration:

AuthUserFile /www/Neon/auth/.htpasswd
AuthName "neon's home"
AuthType Basic
require valid-user
IndexIgnore */*

I created a directory path like /var/www/Neon/auth/

and then placed a .htpasswd file inside it.

To place the username and hash inside the .htpasswd file: I created a username "neon" and calculated the DES hash of a password and placed it inside .htpasswd file in format:

username:hash

Now, when I try to access the web page: http://192.168.2.2/members/

It does not prompt me to enter the username and password with a popup box. Instead it just displays the index.html which is placed inside members directory.

I would like to get this configuration working :)