When your search service is starting to crawl you get the following error message:
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.
If you have followed all the steps from this article http://social.technet.microsoft.com/wiki/contents/articles/25863.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.aspx and the issue is still present you can proceed with the following actions:
1. Check if the content that you are crawling is accessible from the crawl servers
2. Check if the application pool account and content access account are in WSS_WPG group
3. Disable your antivirus
4. Take a fiddler trace and check the communication with /_vti_bin/sitedata.asmx
a. In the fiddler trace if you get 401.1 status – check the following article
5. SharePoint Logs
a. Put the logs in verboseEX mode
get-sploglevel | where {$_.Area -like “*Server Search*”} | Set-SPLogLevel -TraceSeverity VerboseEx
b. Start a full crawl
c. Clear-SPLogLevel
d. Collect the logs
6. On the crawler server check if you have MicrosoftSharePointTeamServices in HTTP Response Headers
Access to IIS->Click the site->Check HTTP Response headers
Remarks:
· If you have BIG IP F5 as NLB check the following article regarding configuration steps http://www.f5.com/pdf/deployment-guides/f5-sharepoint-2010-dg.pdf
· When you modify your host file as indicated in the following article double check the server name:
OK 127.0.0.1 http://servername
NOK 127.0.0.1 servername