Strange permissions related issues, depending on server

Question

We have a three server SharePoint 2013 farm, 2 WFEs 1 APP/CA server.

We were trying to get SQL reporting add on installed to one of the front ends. After the install it started behaving strangely, images were getting permissions issues, browsing to the root of a publishing site would prompt for an access request, etc. If we shut that server off it started working again.

We've tried reconfiguring the distributed cache... It seems to work for a few minutes and then starts failing again. Not sure where to look at this point.

Answer 1

Some things to check

• Make sure the SPNs for Kerberos also apply to the server that does not work. You may not have enabled or set SPNs for the second server, and any web traffic that reaches that server will fail.

  setspn -s http/servername domain\webapplicationpoolaccount

  setspn -s http/servername.domain.com domain\webapplicationpoolaccount

• You can try to disable the SharePoint Foundation web application service, and then reenable it, which will delete the IIS sites from that server and recreate them using the information in the Config database.

• You should also make sure the LoopBack Check has been overridden or disabled. Look at this article here.

• Make sure the administrators of the defunct server match that of the correct web server. Also, if the working server is in a GPO group that overrides the group policy of servers, make sure the defunct server is in that group.

• Make sure your hosts file is not overriding DNS..

Answer 2

I had a similar issue some time ago. After long time of troubleshooting we reviewed the bindings in IIS. One Server just forgot it's configured bindings. After we fixed those, all errors disappeared.