Most of the solutions to questions that are put about SharePoint v3 and allied products can be found in documentation somewhere.
The problem is where is that somewhere is.
Microsoft don't make things easy by having seemingly competing groups providing information so you never know for instance whether the information you are looking for is in a Knowledge Base article; in TechNet or in MSDN.
Whereas the Knowledge Base articles mostly (I shudder when I remember those KB Articles that tell you about web casts especially when they are updated several months after the event has taken place, which clearly shows that some people don't actually read what they are updating) come after the Microsoft Customer Support Services people have had many reports of problems with X or just simply many questions about Y and so tend to be about solving problems or answering common questions, the split between what's in TechNet and MSDN never seems to be clear.
Sometimes in fact I wonder if they know themselves. The only clear line I have been able to draw is that MSDN information is in the form of papers (some as Word documents; some as web pages) which can therefore include screen prints and other images and TechNet is in the form of words only.
The other difference is that TechNet often seems to subscribe to the Russian doll syndrome so that you click on something and it says the answer to that is in the following two pages; so you click on one of those links and it says the answer to that is in the following three pages; and you click on one of those and sometimes the answer is one line of text! This, guys, is taking re-use too far!
OK. Back to the reason for this particular blog.
One of the common questions for Search Server 2008 Express installed on top of WSS 3.0 is "why can I search my own WSS 3.0 sites and get results but when I try to search WSS 3.0 sites on another server, I get nothing?".
So when I, while trying (and failing) to find a "Newly published content for Search Server 2008" page, came across the standard TechNet Search Server 2008 starter page here http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb871550.aspx I had a look to see if I could find anything on this issue.
It wasn't easy. There's no link there in the left-hand-column with the words "Look here for searching non-local WSS 3.0 sites" in bright red and flashing, but finally I found one (at the *third* level below that top page - not much for a Russian doll perhaps but enough for me) that said the following.
"identify the authentication method that is used by the server that hosts the content that you are crawling. By default, Search Server 2008 uses NTLM authentication"
which is something that a reply in a Search server 2008 forum said without though saying whether he was talking about the server on which Search Server 2008 is installed or the (other) server that you are trying to search.
Now, therefore it's clear that if you are (as you probably are) using default values on the WSS 3.0 / Search Server 2008 Express server you will need to make sure that the WSS 3.0 server you are trying to search is set to use NTLM authentication.
The other thing that seems to be necessary (I have no idea - I do know it's linked to from the page that said you need NTLM authentication) is to change the default content access account on the WSS 3.0 / Search Server 2008 Express server which was on a page on the *fourth level*
"Change the default content access account
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On the Search Administration page, in the Crawling section, click Default content access account.
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On the Default Content Access Account page, in the Account box, type the domain and user name for the account in the form DomainName\UserName.
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In the Password and Confirm Password boxes, type the password for the account.
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Click OK.
"
Hopefully this still works when WSS 3.0 is not in a domain otherwise there's yet another reason for searching other servers not to work.
But for now I'm blogging this to make sure the necessity for NTLM authentication is out there. The content access account stuff is something to be tried if that doesn't work.
I suspect I'll find new bits of information on this throughout that entire TechNet section. I'm certainly going to look.
But, wouldn't it be great if they could combine with the MSDN guys and write a *single* paper (with screen shots) on how to set-up Search Server 2008 Express so that it can search non-local WSS 3.0 sites instead of making us search throughout all those short bits and make us piece together (probably wrongly) the full story.