New install: Admin area not loading and showing error

[Guest]

Fresh install of nodebb v4.2.0 on Ubuntu 22.04 with node v18.20.7. The forum appears fine, but when I log in as the admin user and go to the admin area, I just get a message:

Internal Error.
Oops! Looks like something went wrong!
Invalid Version: N/A

logs/output.log shows this whenever I go to that page.

2025-03-20T00:17:41.127Z [4567/1952357] - error: GET /admin
TypeError: Invalid Version: N/A
    at new SemVer (/usr/local/share/nodebb/node_modules/semver/classes/semver.js:38:13)
    at compare (/usr/local/share/nodebb/node_modules/semver/functions/compare.js:3:32)
    at Object.gt (/usr/local/share/nodebb/node_modules/semver/functions/gt.js:2:29)
    at dashboardController.get (/usr/local/share/nodebb/src/controllers/admin/dashboard.js:36:45)
    at process.processTicksAndRejections (node:internal/process/task_queues:95:5)
    at async /usr/local/share/nodebb/src/routes/helpers.js:80:5

I've tried re-running nodebb build and also completely re-installing. Any advice appreciated.

[julian@community.nodebb.org]

@Analog-Weapon thanks, looks like a backend error. Can you please open a GitHub issue?

We're not seeing it on our own installs.

[baris@community.nodebb.org]

@Analog-Weapon Can you access other pages in the admin panel like /admin/settings/general? Looks like an issue with loading latest version and sember on the admin dashboard.

[Guest]

I'm so frustrated with myself. I swear I've been messing with this all day and re-installing. I went to re-install and follow the steps to file the bug report, and it worked this time. I can't think of anything I've done differently. Uninstallation is as simple as removing the directory and dropping the database in mongo, right?

[baris@community.nodebb.org]

@Analog-Weapon yes if you drop the database and remove the nodebb folder you can reinstall again with ./nodebb setup

[baris@community.nodebb.org]

I added a check just incase github returns and invalid semver version https://github.com/NodeBB/NodeBB/commit/6fe066ced2707d31cac6e5ae911010aae08fbfbf

[Guest]

Really odd. I did that at least 5 times today and every time it was showing this error on the admin screen. I did it again now and suddenly everything works. The only thing I'm wondering is if I didn't properly stop nodebb and it was still running when i tried to re-install before.

Anyway, I can try to recreate and report back if I can see what the heck I was doing to cause this. Sorry for the confusion.

[baris@community.nodebb.org]

@Analog-Weapon no worries, the only way this would happen is if github somehow returned a semver version that is not a valid semver string. We get that value from https://api.github.com/repos/NodeBB/NodeBB/releases/latest. With the change I made even if the version is invalid the page will still load.

[Guest]

Ok, I think I just needed more coffee. I had made a shell script:

#!/bin/bash
/usr/local/share/nodebb/nodebb start

and starting that with pm2. That makes this admin screen issue occur. If I don't use pm2 and that shell script, the admin screen works fine.

[Guest]

And if I just start nodebb directly with pm2 like pm2 start /usr/local/share/nodebb/nodebb -- start, everything works fine. So it maybe was something with the environment when I was trying to run it with that shell script.

[baris@community.nodebb.org]

That's interesting. Maybe you can debug here and see what it returns when running normally vs via pm2.