[Techtalk] htaccess and cgi scripts

[Maria McKinley]

Hi there,

I have a user who is using cgi scripts and is using .htpasswd to only 
allow authorized users. For some reason, using the Auth stuff is working 
differently in her cgi stuff than in directories with html. In other 
directories, if you hit cancel when given the username and password 
authorization window, you get the 401 Authorization Required window. In 
her cgi pages, you don't get an error message, it reloads the page you 
were on, but changes the url to the one you were requesting. So, it 
doesn't load the unauthorized page, but it isn't necessarily clear that 
it hasn't. Also, there is at least one page that if I put in the url, it 
will load one image, and ask for a password. Every time you hit cancel 
on this page, it attempts to load images (you end up with question 
marks), until all of the question marks are loaded and then it stops 
asking for a password. The htaccess file for the authorization is 
exactly the same as other directories that act properly.

The only thing strange I have found (and I have not looked at her code 
in detail), are these error messages:

[Sun Nov 18 14:37:33 2007] [error] [client 24.22.172.167] user test not 
found: /~churchland/lip_samson/lip_samson.html
[Sun Nov 18 14:37:37 2007] [error] [client 24.22.172.167] user test not 
found: /~churchland/lip_samson/lip_samson.html
[Sun Nov 18 14:38:20 2007] [error] [client 24.22.172.167] user test not 
found: /~churchland/lip_samson/samsondays/011706/011706_polar.gif
[Sun Nov 18 14:38:20 2007] [error] [client 24.22.172.167] user test not 
found: /~churchland/lip_samson/samsondays/011706/011706_error.gif
[Sun Nov 18 14:38:22 2007] [error] [client 24.22.172.167] user test not 
found: /~churchland/lip_samson/samsondays/011706/011706_polar.gif

I don't know why it is looking for user test, these files are owned by 
churchland, and there is nothing in the html or cgi scripts about an 
user test.

Any ideas where to look? I didn't see anything weird in httpd.conf.

cheers,
maria