Thanks for your help. I tried redirecting by adding "Redirect /w/Special:UserLogin https://<servername>/wiki/Main_Page" to http.conf. The pop-up box came up, I typed in my name and password, and was redirected to the Main Page, but I don't seem to be logged in. I don't see the usual logged-in icons on the top right and I don't see the option to edit pages.
Any advice?
After thinking about this, the redirect is occuring before hitting MediaWiki, and as such, the authentication plugin isn't logging the user in. After the redirect occurs, the user is on a page that doesn't require authentication, so Apache isn't sending the "REMOTE_USER" variable to PHP...
I'm assuming you want the login link to work, which is why you are doing the Location directive on /w/Special:UserLogin. So, what you can do is the following:
Redirect /w/Special:UserLogin https://<servername>/wiki/HttpAuthRedirect
<Location /wiki/HttpAuthRedirect> AuthType "basic" AuthName "wiki" AuthPAM_Enabled on AuthPAM_FallThrough Off SSLRequireSSL Require valid-user </Location>
Then protect and edit HttpAuthRedirect, and put the following line into the page:
#REDIRECT [[Main Page]]
Your users will get two redirects when they log in, but it should work.
V/r,
Ryan Lane