There are some particulars that are not documented very well when
setting up your search settings. The search engine will only crawl on a
site that is the default zone. If the default zone is secured (https),
search will not return any results and you will see an error in the
application log such as:
Event Type: Warning
Event Source: Windows SharePoint Services 3 Search
Event Category: Gatherer
Event ID: 2436
Date: 1/5/2007
Time: 10:40:01 AM
User: N/A
Computer: TEAS-A02
Description:
The start address cannot be crawled.
Context: Application ‘Search index file on the search server’, Catalog ‘Search’
Details:
Access is denied. Check that the Default Content Access
Account has access to this content, or add a crawl rule to crawl this
content. (0×80041205)
To fix this, create and extend the current web application with a new
site. The default settings will suffice for everything except the zone.
Change the “Zone” to Internet or Custom. This new site will be the site
the search service uses to index. Bear in mind the site uses the same
content as your public SharePoint site. After creating the site, go to
Operations > Alternate Access Mappings and change the “Alternate
Access Mapping Collection to your main SharePoint site collection. Then
click “Edit Public URLs” and swap the URLs in the fields such that the
Default zone is the new “unsecured” SharePoint site. The secure site
can be in any zone except the default zone.
Now when the search indexer runs, it will use the default zone site (the new unsecured site) to crawl. That’s it.
