Are there alternatives to using mod_auth_dacs?
Yes, but they are a little more complicated to use or require some programming work. One idea is to use delegated authorization. Another alternative is to employ dacscheck(1), but doing so will require some programming. Instead of accessing web resources directly, you would write a program that would perform an authorization check and then retrieve or execute the requested resource. While this may be an adequate approach in simple cases, it can be tricky to do correctly and securely in general, and results in more complicated URLs. For instance, if you wanted to apply this technique to /index.html, you would move that file to an area not accessible to the web server, and use a URL like http://example.com/cgi-bin/dacswrap/index.html for it, where dacswrap is your program. Your program would do an authorization check, and if access is permitted, retrieve /index.html from wherever you have stashed it and return it in an appropriate HTTP response. Things are much more complicated if your p
