Permissions that are necessary for SharePoint Portal Server 2003 to crawl Windows SharePoint Services content (831085)

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When SharePoint Portal Server crawls Windows SharePoint Services sites, crawling works best if the default access account is a member of the SharePoint administration group on the server that is being crawled. When the default content access account is a member of the SharePoint administration group, a level of administrative access is granted to Windows SharePoint Services so that all sites can be crawled. If the default content access account is not a member of the SharePoint administration group, the server can try to crawl sites. However, any sites where the default content access account does not have permissions to access are not crawled. In this scenario, the gatherer logs report an "Access denied" error.

The default content access account is the user name and the password that are used when SharePoint Portal Server 2003 creates a full-text index of content that is outside the portal. This default content access account must have Read permissions for the Web sites and for the servers that are crawled.

By default, when you install SharePoint Portal Server 2003 with Microsoft SQL Server Desktop Engine 2000 (MSDE), the Network Service account is configured as the default content access account. In a server farm deployment of SharePoint Portal Server 2003, where the configuration database is located on a different server, the server farm administration account is used as the default content access account.

The default content access account must be a member of the SharePoint administration group on the server farm. Members of the SharePoint administration group account can perform administrative tasks in SharePoint Portal Server 2003 and in Windows SharePoint Services without having local administrator rights on the local server. If you change the account that is configured as the default content access account, you must also make sure that the account is a member of the SharePoint Administration group. To do so:

1. Start SharePoint Central Administration.
2. Under Links to related administration home pages, click Windows SharePoint Services.
3. On the Windows SharePoint Services Central Administration page, click Set SharePoint administration group under Security Configuration.
4. On the Set SharePoint administration group page, specify the Windows account (in DomainName\AccountName format) that you want to use as the SharePoint administration group. To do so, do one of the following:
   • Configure the SharePoint administration group account to use the same user account that is configured as the default content access account. For example, if the default content access account is DomainName\UserName, configure DomainName\UserName as the SharePoint Administration group account.
   • Configure the SharePoint administration group account to use the domain group account whose membership includes the default content access account. For example, if the default content access account is a member of the DomainName\GroupName, configure DomainName\GroupName as the SharePoint administration group account.
5. Click OK.

For more information about the default content access account, see the "About Access Accounts for Search" topic in the Microsoft Office SharePoint Portal Server 2003 Administration Guide. For additional information about the SharePoint administration group, see the "Managing the SharePoint Administrators Group" topic in the Microsoft Office SharePoint Portal Server 2003 Administration Guide. The Microsoft Office SharePoint Portal Server 2003 Administration Guide (Administrator's Help.chm) is located in the Docs folder in the root of the SharePoint Portal Server 2003 CD-ROM.

For more information about SharePoint Portal Server, visit the following Microsoft Web site:For more information about Windows SharePoint Services, visit the following Microsoft Web site: