Creating Community subsites

I tried to create a community on my brand new SharePoint 2013 server.

First of all, the familiar Site Actions->New Site has been moved. You now have to open the gear menu, select View Site Content, then click new subsite. According to some blogs, there should be a Community template, but that does not appear on my list.

Recalling that a subweb can be converted to a community via activating the Community Site Feature, I just created a Blank Site and tried to activate the feature. This is when I ran into the following errors:

The Site scoped feature being activated has a dependency on hidden Site scoped feature 'FeatureDefinition/4326e7fc-f35a-4b0f-927c-36264b0a4cf0' (ID: '4326e7fc-f35a-4b0f-927c-36264b0a4cf0'). Hidden features cannot be auto-activated across scopes. There may be one or more visible Site scoped features that auto-activate the dependent hidden feature.
The Site scoped feature being activated has a dependency on hidden Site scoped feature 'FeatureDefinition/915c240e-a6cc-49b8-8b2c-0bff8b553ed3' (ID: '915c240e-a6cc-49b8-8b2c-0bff8b553ed3'). Hidden features cannot be auto-activated across scopes. There may be one or more visible Site scoped features that auto-activate the dependent hidden feature.
The Site scoped feature being activated has a dependency on hidden Site scoped feature 'FeatureDefinition/d32700c7-9ec5-45e6-9c89-ea703efca1df' (ID: 'd32700c7-9ec5-45e6-9c89-ea703efca1df'). Hidden features cannot be auto-activated across scopes. There may be one or more visible Site scoped features that auto-activate the dependent hidden feature.
The Site scoped feature being activated has a dependency on hidden Site scoped feature 'FeatureDefinition/947afd14-0ea1-46c6-be97-dea1bf6f5bae' (ID: '947afd14-0ea1-46c6-be97-dea1bf6f5bae'). Hidden features cannot be auto-activated across scopes. There may be one or more visible Site scoped features that auto-activate the dependent hidden feature.
The Site scoped feature being activated has a dependency on hidden Site scoped feature 'FeatureDefinition/c6a92dbf-6441-4b8b-882f-8d97cb12c83a' (ID: 'c6a92dbf-6441-4b8b-882f-8d97cb12c83a'). Hidden features cannot be auto-activated across scopes. There may be one or more visible Site scoped features that auto-activate the dependent hidden feature.

Curious about what these are? I ran the following Powershell

@("4326e7fc-f35a-4b0f-927c-36264b0a4cf0", "915c240e-a6cc-49b8-8b2c-0bff8b553ed3", "d32700c7-9ec5-45e6-9c89-ea703efca1df", "947afd14-0ea1-46c6-be97-dea1bf6f5bae", "c6a92dbf-6441-4b8b-882f-8d97cb12c83a") | ForEach-Object {Get-SPFeature $_}

and got the following:

DisplayName                    Id                                       CompatibilityLevel   Scope

-----------                    --                                       ------------------   -----

SocialSite                     4326e7fc-f35a-4b0f-927c-36264b0a4cf0     15                   Site

Ratings                        915c240e-a6cc-49b8-8b2c-0bff8b553ed3     15                   Site

CategoriesList                 d32700c7-9ec5-45e6-9c89-ea703efca1df     15                   Web

MembershipList                 947afd14-0ea1-46c6-be97-dea1bf6f5bae     15                   Web

AbuseReportsList               c6a92dbf-6441-4b8b-882f-8d97cb12c83a     15                   Web

Is there a feature that will activate all these as well? Searching around the internet, I did not find any so I figured why not try just activating the 2 site scoped ones using the following Powershell:

$site=Get-SPSite https://somesiteurl
$feature=Get-SPFeature "4326e7fc-f35a-4b0f-927c-36264b0a4cf0"
Enable-SPFeature -Identity $feature -Url $site.Url

$feature=Get-SPFeature " 915c240e-a6cc-49b8-8b2c-0bff8b553ed3 "

Enable-SPFeature -Identity $feature -Url $site.Url

I then went back to the Blank site and was able to activate the Community Site Feature.

I also tried new subsite and, lo and behold, the Community template is now there.

I am sure that someone will soon document how this should actually be done and that this will also be fixed in RTM, but until then, this works for me.

SharePoint Timer Service not starting up

I recently discovered that on one of my farms my SharePoint Timer Service would continuously start up and crash.
There are numerous entries like the following 2 in the System log:

The SharePoint 2010 Timer service terminated unexpectedly.  It has done this 2965 time(s).  The following corrective action will be taken in 30000 milliseconds: Restart the service.

and

The timer service could not initialize its configuration, please check the configuration database.  Will retry later.

The following is found in ULS:

SPTimerStore.InitializeTimer: SPConfigurationDatabase.RefreshCache returned SPConstants.InvalidRowVersion

and

The timer service could not initialize its configuration, please check the configuration database.  Will retry later.

I verified that my service's user context had the correct username and password.

I also cleared the timer cache (and, yes, I emptied the GUID folder and instead of deleting it).

There were a couple of DCOM 10016 errors which seemed irrelevant to this issue, but I fixed those anyway (as per http://sajiviswam.wordpress.com/2011/04/15/the-machine-default-permission-settings-do-not-grant-local-activation-permission-for-the-com-server-application-with-clsid-000c101c-0000-0000-c000-000000000046-sharepoint-2010/)

I'm still getting the same problem.

I started looking at the Fusion log as described in http://soerennielsen.wordpress.com/2009/01/14/fixing-the-timer-service-when-everything-breaks-down/ but think I'm in too deep.

What's curious is that the Timer Service stopped functioning around the time the web application was extended in order to support HTTPS and there are some new files in C:\windows\assembly\GAC_MSIL. However, I am unable to make any connection. As far as I can tell, my assemblies in the GAC are not corrupted since all other functions appear to be working.

SP2013Beta: Adding site (SPWeb) users

I ran into a several relatively trivial issues with adding users to the Members and Owners groups in SharePoint 2013 Beta

My administrator user does not have a Site Settings option under the gear icon at the My Site. However, this was available under my Home site ("/"), so doing some URL mangling, I was able to get the My Site Permissions page by going to /my/_layouts/15/user.aspx

Note that "All Authenticated Users" is now called "Everyone"

The people picker doesn't look like it's working. I get a "Sorry, we're having trouble reaching the server". However, I am able to add users (ie: Share, in SP2013 speak) if I enter the complete name in the picker.

Finally, the "Send an email invitation" setting is checked by default and only accessible after you expand Show Options. That is annoying.