Question

Non local admin access to desktop

Asked by: dwaski

I have an application owner that needs access to users desktops on some of our terminal servers in order to do troubleshooting. I am trying to avoid giving them local administrator but they can be Power User. I looked at simply adding another group with Change rights to the C:\Documents and Settings folder but it occurred to me that as new users get added those rights want be there for the new profiles. How can I grant this user (and potentially others) rights to users desktop without giving them too many rights on the server? Ideally this would be a solution that can be applied to some new servers coming into our environment that this user will maintain and will need the same abilities.  

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Asked On
2009-09-08 at 11:54:47ID24715856
Topic

Windows 2003 Server

Participating Experts
1
Points
500
Comments
8

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Answers

 

by: mpfisterPosted on 2009-09-09 at 00:23:15ID: 25288909

The logon process breaks the inheritance of \Documents and Settings when creating new folders for new users.
Do you use roaming terminal server profiles? If yes, access for your app owner to C:\Documents and Settings doesn't help. Instead he/she needs access to the Terminal Server Profile path to get to the users desktop.

Generally, I'd solve it by running a scheduled task that grants the app owners group permissions to the required directories. If you use roaming profiles, this would be the profile path, if not, it would run on each terminal server and grant access to C:\Documents and Settings. Probably once a day should be enough.

Something similar to
cacls "C:\Documents and Settings" /e /g /t APPOWNERGROUP:C

HTH

 

by: mpfisterPosted on 2009-09-09 at 00:24:07ID: 25288916

sorry, typo:

cacls "C:\Documents and Settings" /e /t /g APPOWNERGROUP:C

 

by: dwaskiPosted on 2009-09-11 at 10:39:40ID: 25311754

I ran this on a server we're disposing of to test the idea. I keep running into account belonging to domain administrators that have a folder called C:\Documents and Settings\<userid>\Application Data\Microsoft
\SystemCertificates\My\CRLs along with other folders under MY. the /C option is supposed to continue on error but it still won't get past this point. Any ideas?

 

by: mpfisterPosted on 2009-09-11 at 11:11:57ID: 25312034

Use xcacls.vbs instead. Download and unpack.
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=0ad33a24-0616-473c-b103-c35bc2820bda&amp;amp;displaylang=en&displaylang=en

 Then run:

for /d %a in ("C:\Documents and Settings\*" ) do cscript XCACLS.vbs "%a" /E /I /G APPOWNERGROUP:M
It should change the perms for each directory under C:\Documents and Settings and add the group. The /I flag causes inheritance to be turned on.

Note that if you put this in a batch, the syntax is:
for /d %%a in ("C:\Documents and Settings\*" ) do cscript XCACLS.vbs "%%a" /E /I /G APPOWNERGROUP:M


HTH

 

by: mpfisterPosted on 2009-09-11 at 11:16:31ID: 25312066

ALternatively filter out the annying directories. See code snippet for a batch

cd "C:\Documents and Settings"
for /d %%a in (*) do call :ChangePerm %%a
Goto :EOF
:ChangePerm
If /I "%1" == "Administrator" Goto :EOF
If /I "%1" == "Administrator.DOMAIN" Goto :EOF
cscript XCACLS.vbs "C:\Documents and Settings\%1" /E /I /G APPOWNERGROUP:M
Goto :EOF

                                              
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by: dwaskiPosted on 2009-09-17 at 07:21:13ID: 25356544

Neither script seemed to resolve the issue. It seems that the subfolder under the users login has inheritance turned off as well. The script will need to be able to go one folder deeper and turn on inheritance after Power User is set on the parent folder.

 

by: mpfisterPosted on 2009-09-17 at 22:33:27ID: 25363103

And adding the /T switch fails again for the special folders?

 

by: dwaskiPosted on 2009-09-29 at 06:38:00ID: 31626252

All of this finally worked to resolve the problem. The inheritance and pushing to the subdirectories.

Thanks for the help

20120131-EE-VQP-002

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