Upon trying to enable the feature for publishing in MOSS, I ran across this security error. Access denied. at Microsoft.SharePoint.Administration.SPPersistedObject.Update().
Under site settings logged in as site collection admin, go to Site Collection Administration -> Site Collection Features.
Office SharePoint Server Publishing Infrastructure
Provides centralized libraries, content types, master pages and page layouts and enables page scheduling and other publishing functionality for a site collection.
Click the Activate and this is where the error is happening.
Upon some wide searches I found this great post that provided a great work around. Here are the basic steps and link.
1. Open IIS Admin.
2. Location the Web Site for your WSS web application.
3. Goto to the properties and select the ‘Home Directory’ tab.
4. Change the AppPool to be the same as Central Administration.
5. IISRESET
6. Activate the Publishing Infrastructure feature on your site.
7. Change to AppPool back to the original.
8. IISRESET.
Activating Office SharePoint Server Publishing Infrastructure – Access Denied
Posted by Joel Kriel 