Apache 2.4 "..authentication failure..:Password Mismatch"

I just had the same issue, was driving me nuts for the last hour. I can confirm that Steve's suggestion to enter the password in the command line works - so in my case "htpasswd -b passwordfile user password" did the trick.

Here is the relevant bug report at Apache.

Did you create your password with 'htpasswd'?

htpasswd in httpd-2.4.4 is broken (https://issues.apache.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=54735).

As I understand it, the problem is specific to htpasswd in httpd-2.4.4, and only occurs if you enter the password manually, so you can work around the issue by doing one of:

• supply the password on the command line (e.g. "htpasswd -b .htpasswd user password");
• use the version of htpasswd out of httpd-2.4.3;
• use Digest Authentication instead of Basic Authentication (htdigest isn't affected);
• wait until httpd-2.4.5 is released;
• apply the patch in the bug report (which seems to work) and rebuild htpasswd from source.