Anonymous access to SMB share hosted on Server 2008 R2 Enterprise

Posted by bwerks on Server Fault See other posts from Server Fault or by bwerks
Published on 2010-12-30T19:31:28Z Indexed on 2010/12/30 20:56 UTC
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Hi all,

First off, I have read through this post and a whole slew of non-SF posts which seem to address the same or a similar problem, however I was still unable to fix my problem.

I've got three machines in this situation:

  • a domain-joined server that runs Server 2008 R2 Enterprise ("share server")
  • a domain-joined workstation running XP Pro SP3 ("test server")
  • a domain-unjoined test server running Server 2003 R2 SP2 ("workstation")

The share server is exposing a share on the network that the test server must access--it's a Source/Symbol Server share for our debugging purposes. I believe visual studio simply accesses the the share with its own credentials in this case, meaning that the share must be accessible anonymously since the test server isn't joined to the domain and there's no opportunity to supply domain authentication.

I've attempted a lot of things to avoid the authentication window when accessing the share:

  • I've enabled the Guest account on the share server and given Guest full sharing/NTFS permissions for the share.
  • I've given ANONYMOUS LOGON full sharing/NTFS permissions for the share.
  • I've added my share to “Network Access: Shares that can be accessed anonymously” in LSP.
  • I've disabled “Network access: Restrict anonymous access to Named Pipes and Shares” in LSP.
  • I've enabled “Network access: Let Everyone permissions apply to anonymous users” in LSP.
  • Added ANONYMOUS LOGON to “Access this computer from the network” in LSP.
  • Added the Guest account to “Access this computer from the network” in LSP.
  • Attempted to provision the share using the Share and Storage Management MMC snap-in.

Unfortunately when I attempt to access the share from the test server, I still see the prompt and I'm forced to enter "Guest" manually.

I also tried this workflow using the local administrator account on a workstation, and the same thing happens both with and without XP Simple File Sharing enabled.

Any idea why I'm getting these results, or what I should have done differently?

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