Password Management Using htpasswd

In Linux, several components use non-system standard passwords.

Some of these are svn, and ftp (e.g. vsftpd).

Here are the basics to get you through setting and resetting these passwords:

For svn, refer this guide.

For vsftpd, refer this guide.

Basically, htpasswd can be used to create encrypted passwords for such modules. Here are some basics to htpasswd:

1. htpasswd uses a password encrypted file, using an SSL certificate.
You can create your own ssl certificate too. But for public/production environments, you'd want to get a certificate from a third party so users don't get a security alert.

2. The first time, use the -c flag to set a password, as follows. You'll need to do this as root (or prefix sudo in ubuntu)

htpasswd -c /etc/apache2/my_passwd.passwd username

3. Subsequently, use the -m flag to modify this file for adding/editing users:

htpasswd -m /etc/apache2/my_passwd.passwd username