general/4862: AuthRealm is lost during / -> /index.html automatic redirection

[Matthias Suencksen <ms...@marcant.de>]

>Number:         4862
>Category:       general
>Synopsis:       AuthRealm is lost during / -> /index.html automatic redirection
>Confidential:   no
>Severity:       non-critical
>Priority:       medium
>Responsible:    apache
>State:          open
>Class:          sw-bug
>Submitter-Id:   apache
>Arrival-Date:   Sun Aug 15 05:10:00 PDT 1999
>Last-Modified:
>Originator:     msuencks@marcant.de
>Organization:
apache
>Release:        1.3.6
>Environment:
linux 2.0.36
>Description:

For a special reason only the location "/" (or "/index.html") has
to be password protected at our site, but not the other files in the directory.

The only way of implementing it seemed to me:

<Location /index.html>
AuthType Basic 
...
</Location>

This works - however, when the user request "/" (instead of "/index.html") 
although he is being asked for user/password, the AuthRealm is _not_ displayed.

My current work-around is to insert:

RewriteEngine On
RewriteRule ^/$ /index.html [R]

As a side note let me note that (AFAIR) MSIE 4
fails to show the user/password-Dialog (!) when no Auth-Realm-Header
is present and will just show the "Authorization required" page. This is how
I came upon this bug in the first place.

regards

>How-To-Repeat:
compare the following URLs

http://www.marcant.de/test3/index.html
http://www.marcant.de/test3/

>Fix:

>Audit-Trail:
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