This week I tried to retract the mosstraining.wsp solution because we never used this solution, and I am cleaning up our MOSS 2007 server in preparation for the upgrade to Sharepoint 2010, but it retracted forever! I went to Central Administration > Operations > Solution management, clicked on the mosstraining.wsp file, then clicked on the ‘Retract Solution’ button. I followed the steps and advice in the microsoft documentation which states that you must retract the solution before you can remove/delete it. I also remember reading somewhere that the retraction process can take a while, so I went to lunch. After lunch the solution was still retracting. The next morning I found that the server had crashed, and after restarting, the solution was still…. retracting!
Thank God that I found MJs blog post before I pulled out all my hair!
Although i have tried manually and through stsadm/code the solution retraction never completes and gives the status as retracting forever. i have jotted down some workarounds that might work when Solution deployment hungs while deploying a solution :
1. Run execadmsvcjobs that will forcefully run the timer jobs
stsadm -o execadmsvcjobs
2. Delete the existing timer job for the retraction and retry retracting
From UI central admin -> operations -> Time Job Definitions ->click on timer job and delete. For the timer jobs that do not have the delete option enabled stsadm utility can be used,
stsadm -o deletesptimerjob -title -id
3. To get the job id for the timer try the following stsadm -o enumssptimerjobs
4. If running out of options then stop retracting and delete the solution using override
stsadm -o deletesolution -filename -override
- I tried MJ’s first suggestion, stsadm -o execadmsvcjobs, but it didn’t help.
- I tried his second suggestion, I went to Central Administration and deleted the existing timer job for the solution.
- Then I went straight to suggestion number four and nuked it, stsadm -o deletesolution -mosstraining.wsp -override, and it was gone! Thanks MJ!