Password-protect access to an application with NGINX

To configure NGINX to request a username and password when accessing your application, follow these steps:

• At the console, type the following commands. Remember to replace APPNAME, USERNAME and PASSWORD with your application name, desired username and desired password respectively.

    $ sudo apt-get update
    $ sudo apt-get install apache2-utils
    $ sudo htpasswd -cb /opt/bitnami/nginx/users USERNAME PASSWORD
  

• Edit the /opt/bitnami/nginx/conf/server_blocks/APPNAME-server-block.conf and /opt/bitnami/nginx/conf/server_blocks/APPNAME-https-server-block.conf application configuration files NGINX and add a location block as shown below:

    location / {
        auth_basic "Restricted Area";
        auth_basic_user_file /opt/bitnami/nginx/users;
    }
  

  NOTE: If you don’t wish to protect the entire application, but only a sub-URL, create a new location block as shown above only for the sub-URL you wish to protect.

• Restart the NGINX server:

    $ sudo /opt/bitnami/ctlscript.sh restart nginx
  

When accessing the application, you will see an authentication popup window. Enter the username and password defined in the first step:

To change the password later, run the htpasswd utility without the -c switch:

$ sudo htpasswd /opt/bitnami/users USERNAME