A service accessing an UNC path, Win 2008R2, best practices?

Question

I have an Apache Webserver service running on Machine A.

It serves some files from machine B, by having an

Alias /foo \machineB\someshare

MachineB\someshare is read-accessible to "Everyone". Apache runs as LocalService.

When I boot the machine, it isn't able to serve files from /foo, but If i log onto the machine, and just touch the \machineB\someshare it looks like access is granted, and it correctly serves files from /foo.

How do I automate this, so I don't need to log in and touch the network share?

Forgot to say both servers are win 2k8r2 – Soraz Jun 08 '11 at 18:05 — Soraz, Jun 08 '11 at 18:05

score 0 · Answer 1 · answered Jun 08 '11 at 17:21

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Try running Apache as a domain user service account, with necessary privileges of course, and see where that gets you.

answered Jun 08 '11 at 17:21

SpacemanSpiff

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score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Jun 08 '11 at 17:22

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one possibility - have the web server mount the remote share via cifs in the fstab? You'll have to supply credentials, but they can be guest creds I believe. Alternately a startup script that mounts and unmounts might have the same effect.

answered Jun 08 '11 at 17:22

uSlackr

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that would work, but he didn't state if machine A was running windows or not – SpacemanSpiff Jun 08 '11 at 17:41

score 0 · Answer 3 · answered Jun 09 '11 at 02:58

If I remember correctly, starting with Windows Vista, the security group "Everyone" does not include "anonymous" logins. When accessing a remote share using a service that is running as "LocalService" it accesses using a NULL user, or anonymous, so it won't be able to access the remote share.

As SpacemanSpiff recommended, change apache to run as a domain user, or try using "NetworkService" instead of "LocalService".

A service accessing an UNC path, Win 2008R2, best practices?

3 Answers3