As your salt question seems to have been answered already, I'd like to point out that you could just use Apache::Htpasswd, without your admin/root needing to install it...

You can just upload the module-file Htpasswd.pm into a directory '/yourhome/lib/Apache', and add a use lib '/yourhome/lib'; to your code. Then you just use Apache::Htpasswd; as you normally would.

Less code for you to maintain yourself... :)