Good question, according to the documentation it should work, I'll push this onto the mod_python mailing list for discussion and get a bug report posted if necessary.
In the meantime, you could use the following work around: def __auth__(req, user, passwd): req.user = user if user == 'noppa' and passwd == 'potti': return True else: return False Ie., explicitly set "req.user" in the __auth__ method. -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list