Deployed solution does not appear in site collection features.

Question

I have a custom SharePoint solution that I am attempting to deploy to a very simple standalone SharePoint server installation. The installation has only two web applications, one for Central Admin and one for content. I've gone through the process of adding the solution to the farm using the stsadm -o addsolution command and it appears in the farm solutions list just fine. However when I deploy the solution to the content web application it does not appear in the site collection features in any site collection in that web application. What's weird is that if I deploy it to the Central Admin site collection it does appear in the features and I can use the webparts without any problems.

It seems like something got crossed up in that content web application and I can't figure out how to flush out all evidence of the solution and get it to recognize that its been deployed there. I have tried a variety of stsadm commands to retract, delete, deploy, sync and force deploy the solution to that web application a number of times with no luck. Is there another way to flush it out of there so that when it deploys it actually recognizes it or am I stuck with having to delete my web application and rebuild it?

Answer 1

Run the stsadm -o enumsolutions command from a command line on the SP server to see where and if this solution was deployed.

stsadm -o enumsolutions

Thanks. I have had this happen before as well. I ran the following stsadm commands in this order. My goal was to go step by step and remove any aspect of the solution and then slowly place it back into the farm and activate it.

First deactivate the feature. Use the Name of the feature and not the .wsp name.

stsadm -o deactivatefeature -name "FeatureName" -url http://mywebapp.com

Retract the solution from the farm

stsadm -o retractsolution -name solution.wsp -allcontenturls -immediate

Run the execute server jobs command

stsadm -o execadmsvcjobs    

Delete the solution from the solution store

stsadm -o deletesolution -name solution.wsp

This should give us a clean start. Now we can put the solution back.

stsadm -o addsolution -filename solution.wsp

Deploy the solution. Use the -allowgacdeployment switch if the solution needs to go to the GAC (Global Assembly Cache). Otherwise, leave it out.

stsadm -o deploysolution -name solution.wsp -url http://mywebapp.com/ -immediate -allowgacdeployment

Run the execute server jobs command

stsadm -o execadmsvcjobs

Install the feature to the farm

stsadm -o installfeature -name "FeatureName" -force

Activate the Feature

stsadm -o  activatefeature -name "FeatureName" -url http://mywebapp.com

Let me know if you have questions about these steps.

Answer 2

There is another reason to why that feature is not visible / available in the site collection features, that feature have set the property as ** Hidden="TRUE"** So activate this feature with the help of power-shell command as below- Enable-SPFeature "db9a386d-b114-4f1a-9509-1fae5d05b655" -Url http://pc110/sites/test

Note: "db9a386d-b114-4f1a-9509-1fae5d05b655" is the Id of feature. Hope this might be the one of reason, that's why features are invisible/hide/not seen.