SMTP Settings + Object Reference not set to an instance of an object

[wesfincher]

Hey there - I'm not new to the DNN platform but relatively new in the community. Hoping to become more active in the future. For now, I could use some help...

Recently upgraded one of my sites to 9.10.1 (copied production to staging, upgraded site, updated host/portal settings via script). I've done this 4 other times without any major issue. This time I'm seeing an error in the persona bar when trying to access the SMTP settings. Confirmed version 9.10.1 for Persona bar dlls

Here's the server response in the network tab of my browser:
{"Message":"An error has occurred.","ExceptionMessage":"Object reference not set to an instance of an object.","ExceptionType":"System.NullReferenceException","StackTrace":" at Dnn.PersonaBar.Servers.Services.ServerSettingsSmtpHostController.GetSmtpSettings()"}

Looking at the code for ServerSettingsSmtpHostController (9.10.1), I'm not seeing any obvious culprits. What other settings could I be missing? I get this error on my server hosted site and when running my site locally. How do I fix this?

[bdukes]

Welcome to the community 🎊

What version are you upgrading from?

Do you have a <mail> section in your web.config file? Is the defaultProvider attribute specified and matching an entry?

[wesfincher]

Thanks! And thank you for chiming in...

I am upgrading from 9.0.2. Neither my old nor my new web.config have a <mail> section in web.config.

[wesfincher]

This appears to have been the issue. We were able to copy the <mail> section from another site and the SMTP settings now load. Thank you!!

Follow up: If this was a failure in a portion of the upgrade, how do I easily identify what other portions of the upgrade may have failed? Or how do I recover from a failed upgrade?

[bdukes]

Typically I would recommend reverting and doing the upgrade again if there were errors. Did you follow the suggested upgrade path?

To identify issues from the upgrade, you can look in Portals/_default/Logs for the InstallerLogyyyyMMdd.resources file(s) to see details of the package installations.

Hope it helps!