Manual Page For htadm

W3C httpd password file can be maintained with htadm program which is a part ot W3C httpd distribution.

Command Line Options and Parameters

htadm -adduser passwordfile [username [password [realname]]]: adds a user into the password file (fails if there is already a user by that name).
htadm -deluser passwordfile [username]: deletes a user from the password file (fails if there is no user by that name).
htadm -passwd passwordfile [username [password]]: changes user's password (fails if there is no such user).
htadm -check passwordfile [username [password]]: checks user's password (fails if there is no such user). Writes either Correct or Incorrect to standard output. Also indicates password correctness by a zero return value.
htadm -create passwordfile: creates an empty password file.

If password or even username is missing in either of the previous cases they are prompted interactively. passwordfile must be always specified. Missing real name is also prompted when adding a new user.

Do NOT use htadm to add new users to the actual Unix password file /etc/passwd, entries written by htadm are missing some necessary fields to Unix.

Note: Passwords should not be longer than 8 characters (this is a restriction from linemode clients using C library function getpass() to read the password -- there is no other cause for this restriction; the maximum hardcoded password size is actually much larger, and if you only use GUI or other clients that are able to read this long passwords, feel free to use them).

Note: htadm destroys the password from command line as soon as possible so that it is very unlikely to see somebody's password by looking at the process listing on the machine (with ps, for example).

httpd@w3.org, July 1995