Users getting access denied, until secondary alias is set

Question

I am facing a bit of a strange issue, let me try to elaborate.

There are three users

1. Normal user
2. Admin user
3. Secondary admin

Pro-grammatically I am provisioning site collection using below code:

SPSites.Add(sitecollURL, title, "Site Description", 1033, templateID, Admin user, adminUserName, "");

So I am provisioning the site by setting the primary admin only, not providing any value in secondary admin.

After site provisioning is done I am adding the normal user to a SharePoint group having contribute access.

So far all good.

There is a document library in the newly provisioned site collection having some image files inside a folder, both user have access to the library as well as folder, as the library is inheriting permissions from parent.

At first I am getting an "access denied" error for the normal user while accessing any image file from the library(I have contribute rights)

But as soon as I execute the following powershell command

Set-SPSite -Identity "<SiteCollection>" -SecondaryOwnerAlias "secondary admin"

The normal user starts behaving normally no more access denied while accessing images

I am not able to find any possible reason behind this

Additional information: all of the users are claims based user

Answer 1

Commom features/images/scripts/styles should always be set to let NT Authority\Autheticated users read.

Imagine that some resources referenced in your masterpage are restricted. Then, everybody will get tons of "Access Denied".

About the "Site Pages" issue:

Your site pages are referencing something different? Like custom webparts calling CSS/JS or something like that?