Configure Search Crawl using FBA & Host Named Site Collections

Question

I have a working Web App with FBA and multiple HNSC. In order to configure the Search service, I've:

1. Extended this Web App to an NTLM auth site.
2. In the Content Sources I've included every HNSC and the NTLM site
3. Even though it's not needed yet, I've added a server mapping between the NTLM site and the public URL.

When I run a Full crawl, I get an error for each of the sites being crawled:

Access is denied. Verify that either the Default Content Access Account has access to this repository, or add a crawl rule to crawl this repository. If the repository being crawled is a SharePoint repository, verify that the account you are using has "Full Read" permissions on the SharePoint Web Application being crawled. ( Error from SharePoint site: HttpStatusCode Unauthorized The request failed with HTTP status 401: Unauthorized ... )

I have:

• Tried adding DisableLoopbackCheck property
• Checked that the Search Crawling Account has Full Read on the Web App
• Included an entry in the hosts file for every site collection with 127.0.0.1 as the IP followed by the host name
• Enabling Win authentication on the Web App's default zone
• Reverting custom master pages to make sure there aren't any resources left unpublished

Is there anything that I am missing?

Answer 1

When using HNSCs, you must have NTLM configured on the Default zone your FBA-enabled web app.

Additionally, you must also have a site collection that matches the host name of your web application. For instance, if your web app was set up on https://hnsc, you must also create a site collection on that web application at the https://hnsc address (you can do that from the standard Create Site Collection UI, there is no need to use the HNSC-specific PowerShell command for that site collection): even if no user can access it, the Search Service requires it to start crawling all the HNSCs on the web application.

I hope this helps.