This sounds like a problem I encountered last week, although it's hard to tell without seeing your code.

Before returning AUTH_REQUIRED, you need to call $r->note_basic_auth_failure, otherwise the WWW-Authenticate HTTP header isn't returned, so the browser doesn't ask the user to re-enter their username and password.

Strictly speaking, you should return FORBIDDEN from a PerlAuthzHandler which is called after the PerlAuthenHandler. This gives you the flexibility to deal with authentication and authorisation in different stages. You can use $r->notes to pass variables between separate handlers.

If you want to give the user three chances only, you'd need to store some session data, possibly using Apache::Session. However, I can't see the advantage of this, as malicious clients will find some way of pretending to be someone else (User-Agent modification, dispose session cookies, etc.) then send three more requests.

In reply to Re: Apache AuthType problem by tomhukins
in thread Apache AuthType problem by Jonathan

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