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Configure client certificates for crawling an SSL site (Search Server 2008)

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Applies To: Microsoft Search Server 2008

 

Topic Last Modified: 2009-04-03

Note

Unless otherwise noted, the information in this article applies to both Microsoft Search Server 2008 and Microsoft Search Server 2008 Express.

When crawling content, the crawler uses NTLM for authentication, by default. Some content sources that you want to crawl may use Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) and require client certificates for authentication. A search service administrator can create a crawl rule to configure the crawler to use a client certificate, instead of NTLM, when crawling a particular URL or range of URLs. For more information about how to create and configure crawl rules, see Plan to crawl content (Search Server 2008).

Important

You must be a search services administrator to perform this procedure. For more information, see Add or remove a search services administrator (Search Server 2008).

To configure client certificates for crawling an SSL site

Before performing this procedure, a server administrator must register the client certificate with the index server; otherwise, authentication fails and the content is not crawled. Use the following procedure to create a crawl rule that configures the crawler to use a client certificate when crawling a particular path. For more information about server certificates, see Server Certificate Deployment (https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=144649).

Configure client certificates for crawling an SSL site

  1. On the Search Administration page, in the Crawling section, click Crawl Rules.

  2. On the Manage Crawl Rules page, click New Crawl Rule.

  3. On the Add Crawl Rule page, in the Path section, in the Path box, type the path of the content that requires the crawler to use SSL and client certificates.

  4. In the Crawl Configuration section, click Include all items in this path.

  5. In the Specify Authentication section, click Specify client certificate, and then on the Certificate list, click the certificate that you want to use.

  6. Click OK.

See Also

Concepts

Add content sources (Search Server 2008)
IFilters and protocol handlers (Search Server 2008)
Configure searches to return blog post results (Search Server 2008)
Plan to crawl content (Search Server 2008)
Configure how the crawler authenticates (Search Server 2008)