On Windows 2008 R2/IIS 7.5 I need to create a virtual directory that points to a network share. The contents of the virtual directory need to allow anonymous access through IIS. To make this work, I have granted "EVERYONE" NTFS and share read only rights, through IIS mapping use the service account that runs the IIS application pool; set the virtual directory to anonymous. All of this still resulted in a 403 - forbidden access error message when trying to access the virtual directory through the web.
What I had to do was create and define a valid default document for the virtual directory and all that allowed all content in the directory to be accessible. I was wondering if there is an alternate/better approach? The default document is simply a placeholder and is not content for the site; I'd rather not have the functionality dependent on it if possible.
