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What is UNC Path impersonation?

UNC is short for Uniform Naming Convention. It is a format for specifying the location of network resources (network share folder) on the LAN. UNC uses the following format: \\server-name\shared-resource-pathname. So, for example, to access the shared directory public on the shared server mcp0064, you would write: \\mcp0064\public.

Normally when the Xlight FTP Server accesses the UNC path, it will access it with the current logon user account. However, the current logon user account may not have permission to access the UNC path on another server. UNC path impersonation is used to resolve this issue. You can set up an impersonation account as the user of another server and have enough permission to access the UNC path. In the public, user and group path setup Windows, click this icon to set up UNC path impersonation(If the network path is SAMBA in UNIX, the logon domain will be the workgroup name of SAMBA). After you set up UNC path impersonation, the Xlight FTP Server will use the impersonation account to access this UNC path. Note: after the 30-day evaluation period, this function is only supported by the Standard and Professional editions of Xlight FTP Server.

How to access network share when Xlight FTP is running as a system service?

When Xlight FTP is running as a system service, it is normally run using the Local Administrator account. This account cannot access some of the network shares that Windows desktop user accounts can access. To access network share, you can use either one of the following two methods:

1. Using an account that can access network share to run Xlight FTP Service. If the account doesn't have administrator privileges, you can check this link for how to run Xlight FTP Service with the non-admin account.

2. Using UNC path impersonation. By using UNC path impersonation, Xlight FTP can access different network shares with different accounts. The following is a picture showing how to access Linux network share (samba) using "anonymous" account with any password.

Please note you cannot use the mapped network drive when Xlight FTP is running as a service. The mapped network drive is not accessible from the service program. You must use the UNC path format for network share.