One of our users recently requested that we install one of the SharePoint Application Templates provided by Microsoft. The template the user requested was a Server Admin Template, which meant that the Application Template Core solution had to be installed (see the installation instructions).
The problem was that the solution would never install. It would be stuck in an “Deploying” mode and even though the timer job indicated that it had “Succeeded” it still remained. Attempting to create a new site based on the template would yield an error. Deleting the solutions and reinstalling them didn’t help.
A Google search eventually led to this solution:
http://blumenthalit.net/blog/Lists/Posts/Post.aspx?ID=116
Basically the solution still needs to be deployed to the entire farm; to do this you execute
stsadm -o execadmsvcjobs
on all servers in the server farm. This gets rid of the deployment job and changes the solution status to “Deployed,” after which the template can be used without errors.
We’ve encountered the stuck deployment job when switching service accounts as well, so I’d like to try this when we switch accounts again. Stay tuned.