Allow anonymous access to Server 2012 shared folder for WSUS

DocGreen

Well-Known Member
Reaction score
44
Location
South Bend, IN
This is becoming a PITA for me... I have my WSUS offline updater on my Server 2012 box, but I'm running into problems getting the automatic reboot & recall to work because the computer needs credentials to access the folder. I've set the WSUS folder to allow "Everyone" read/write access, but in order to even browse for that share you need to enter credentials. Can anyone tell me what I'm doing wrong here?
 
I believe that anonymous users have a group in AD -- you must add this group to the folder permissions.

If you still run into problems, I'd spin up a VM and use a different OS (either a non-server Windows version or Ubuntu) and share the folder from that machine.
 
. I've set the WSUS folder to allow "Everyone" read/write access, but in order to even browse for that share you need to enter credentials.

Under which tab..sharing or security.
I do "everyone" full read/write on sharing, and get granular under the Security tab....which is the actual NTFS permissions you're working with.
 
I set the full-control permissions in both the sharing and security tabs... but the problem is that when I navigate to the server "\\workbench" it asks for credentials before it even lets me see the individual shares.
 
There's a setting in group policy to allow anonymous logon. I don't recall what it is off the top of my head but try Googling anonymous logon or anonymous access to share group policy and it should come up.
 
I checked AD users/groups... no "anonymous" that I could see. Am I missing it?

Perhaps it was removed -- the last server I set up was 2008 R2. As suggested above, a GPO might do the trick. Alternatively, if you get a Ubuntu server setup (a VM would work), it's 2 lines on the command prompt to setup an anonymous share.

I know Windows 7 has the anonymous user group built in by default -- if you have a COA for Home/Professional that is another option. (I'm assuming this server has other tasks and you did not set it up solely for WSUS file sharing.)
 
Back
Top