Issue while upgrading Netbox from 3.4.4 to 3.6.5: 'Group Matching Query Does Not Exist' error post-upgrade to PostgreSQL 15.3

[F3d0s]

Hi people, I'm having an issue while upgrading Netbox from version 3.4.4 to 3.6.5. I hope you can help me find what I'm doing wrong.

I started with upgrading the DB (Azure Database for PostgreSQL) from version 11 (single server) to version 15.3 (flexible server), and I migrated the old DB version to the new DB version. At that moment, I still had Netbox 3.4.4, but I already got the error message I'll show later, I thought it was with some compatibility issue with PostgreSQL 15.3, so I upgraded Netbox to version 3.6.5 (via git).

Unfortunately, the error message is still there.

This is the setup Netbox in my company:

Server: Azure VM with Ubuntu 22.04
PostgreSQL 15.3 (Azure Database)
Python 3.10.12

This is the error message I got printed on the screen after login to Netbox:

<class 'django.contrib.auth.models.Group.DoesNotExist'>

Group matching query does not exist.

Python version: 3.10.12
NetBox version: 3.6.5
Plugins: 
  django3_saml2_nbplugin: 2.0

The file configuration.py looks fine.
It looks like this could occur when Django is trying to query a group that doesn’t exist in the database. This could be due to a variety of reasons, such as a missing migration or a problem with the database. The migration was completed successfully unless something changed while moving the data from PostgreSQL 11 to 15.3.

This is the result I got after running the command python3 manage.py migrate in /opt/netbox/netbox/

/usr/lib/python3/dist-packages/requests/__init__.py:87: RequestsDependencyWarning: urllib3 (2.0.3) or chardet (4.0.0) doesn't match a supported version!
  warnings.warn("urllib3 ({}) or chardet ({}) doesn't match a supported "
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/opt/netbox/netbox/netbox/settings.py", line 737, in <module>
    plugin = importlib.import_module(plugin_name)
  File "/usr/lib/python3.10/importlib/__init__.py", line 126, in import_module
    return _bootstrap._gcd_import(name[level:], package, level)
  File "<frozen importlib._bootstrap>", line 1050, in _gcd_import
  File "<frozen importlib._bootstrap>", line 1027, in _find_and_load
  File "<frozen importlib._bootstrap>", line 1004, in _find_and_load_unlocked
ModuleNotFoundError: No module named 'django3_saml2_nbplugin'

During handling of the above exception, another exception occurred:

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/opt/netbox/netbox/manage.py", line 10, in <module>
    execute_from_command_line(sys.argv)
  File "/usr/local/lib/python3.10/dist-packages/django/core/management/__init__.py", line 442, in execute_from_command_line
    utility.execute()
  File "/usr/local/lib/python3.10/dist-packages/django/core/management/__init__.py", line 436, in execute
    self.fetch_command(subcommand).run_from_argv(self.argv)
  File "/usr/local/lib/python3.10/dist-packages/django/core/management/base.py", line 412, in run_from_argv
    self.execute(*args, **cmd_options)
  File "/usr/local/lib/python3.10/dist-packages/django/core/management/base.py", line 458, in execute
    output = self.handle(*args, **options)
  File "/usr/local/lib/python3.10/dist-packages/django/core/management/base.py", line 103, in wrapper
    saved_locale = translation.get_language()
  File "/usr/local/lib/python3.10/dist-packages/django/utils/translation/__init__.py", line 210, in get_language
    return _trans.get_language()
  File "/usr/local/lib/python3.10/dist-packages/django/utils/translation/__init__.py", line 65, in __getattr__
    if settings.USE_I18N:
  File "/usr/local/lib/python3.10/dist-packages/django/conf/__init__.py", line 102, in __getattr__
    self._setup(name)
  File "/usr/local/lib/python3.10/dist-packages/django/conf/__init__.py", line 89, in _setup
    self._wrapped = Settings(settings_module)
  File "/usr/local/lib/python3.10/dist-packages/django/conf/__init__.py", line 217, in __init__
    mod = importlib.import_module(self.SETTINGS_MODULE)
  File "/usr/lib/python3.10/importlib/__init__.py", line 126, in import_module
    return _bootstrap._gcd_import(name[level:], package, level)
  File "<frozen importlib._bootstrap>", line 1050, in _gcd_import
  File "<frozen importlib._bootstrap>", line 1027, in _find_and_load
  File "<frozen importlib._bootstrap>", line 1006, in _find_and_load_unlocked
  File "<frozen importlib._bootstrap>", line 688, in _load_unlocked
  File "<frozen importlib._bootstrap_external>", line 883, in exec_module
  File "<frozen importlib._bootstrap>", line 241, in _call_with_frames_removed
  File "/opt/netbox/netbox/netbox/settings.py", line 740, in <module>
    raise ImproperlyConfigured(
django.core.exceptions.ImproperlyConfigured: Unable to import plugin django3_saml2_nbplugin: Module not found. Check that the plugin module has been installed within the correct Python environment.

I guess this is happening because Netbox uses a python venv where django3_saml2_nbplugin should be installed.

Are there some pending migrations that need to be applied after upgrading the DB to PostgreSQL, which may caused this issue?

EDIT:
I could verify the 'django3_saml2_nbplugin' module being installed within Netbox's virtual Python environment and yes, it's there.

admin@Netbox-DEV:/opt/netbox/venv$ source bin/activate
(venv) admin@Netbox-DEV:/opt/netbox/venv$ pip list
django3-auth-saml2            0.6.1