Understanding anonymous access

It is not always desirable or possible to create and map a UNIX account for every Windows user. A Windows user whose account is not mapped to a UNIX account is treated by Server for NFS as an anonymous user—that is, a user with a user identifier (UID) and group identifier (GID) of -2 and -2, respectively.

For example, if a user on a UNIX computer lists files on a Server for NFS share, and those files are owned by Windows users whose accounts have not been mapped to UNIX accounts, the owner of those files will be shown as anonymous user and group, (-2,-2).

By default, Server for NFS does not allow anonymous users to access a shared directory. When you share a directory, you can allow anonymous access to the directory and you can change the default anonymous UID and GID values to the UID and GID of any valid UNIX user and group accounts. If you change the anonymous UID and anonymous GID for a share, those values will be used when reporting the owner of a file owned by an unmapped user, even if anonymous access is not allowed. For more information about configuring anonymous access for a shared directory, see To allow anonymous access to a shared directory.