custom timer job with feature receiver not working in the browser

Question

I've created a custom timer job with the following sample

http://dotnetfinder.wordpress.com/2010/07/24/creatingcustomsharepointtimerjob2010/

The feature is site scoped. In the feature receiver on the FeatureActivated event I create the timer job and on the FeatureDeactivating event I delete the timer job.

The problem is that when I activate the feature with powershell everything is working fine but if I try to activate the feature in the browser it won't activate.

After a little debugging, I know it throws several security exceptions in the feature receiver. Is there a way to run the code with a higher privileged account, or should a feature that creates a timer job always be activated with powershell?

Thanks in advance! :)

Answer 1

Several days ago I tried to run timer job in a feature receiver of web site. I was a farm administrator, but when I tried to run job, I alwas got an error. I investigated a lot of solutions and then asked this question. I think that is a good thread to undertsand how to configure timer job and place where this job should be run. I hope it will be helpful for you.

Answer 2

Yes, there is a method to run the code with a higher privileged account. Use the SPSecurity.RunwithElevatedPrivileges

This method runs under the Application Pool identity, which has site collection administrator privileges on all site collections hosted by that application pool.

Check the examples how it is used in the article.

Answer 3

Assuming that you are using SharePoint 2010, I suppose that you are begin blocked by the Remote Administration Access Denied setting. As from Msdn, this new security feature "explicitly blocks any modifications to the objects inheriting from SPPersistedObject in the Microsoft.SharePoint.Administration namespace and does not allow the content web applications to update the configuration database".

Since you are attempting to create a timer job from a site collection feature, the remote administration access denied setting will block the opeation and throw an Access Denied error.

If this is the case, you could try to change your feature scope to a web application level. In this case the feature will be activated in the central administration site, thus avoiding the Remote Administration setting.

You could also try to switch of the remote administration access denied feature, but I wouldn't recomand this.

You can find additional info about the issue in this kb article.