White Screen of Death while upgrading from 5.35.5 to 5.36.2

Troubleshooting
1

We run mattermost team edition on a centos 7 server with postgres 12.7, and when I attempt to upgrade our install to 5.36.2, the mobile client connects fine to it, but the desktop client and web browser client both display white screens.

Steps:

  1. From version 5.35.2, stop the server.
  2. Backup config, data, logs, and plugins directories.
  3. rm -rf mattermost directory
  4. untar 5.36.2
  5. copy backup files above back in.
  6. chown -R mattermost:mattermost mattermost to ensure permissions
  7. run server
  8. attempt to connect to url through browser or desktop app

Expected behavior:
I would expect to be able to connect to the server and see the chatroom interface.

Observed Behavior:
I get redirected to the last room url my session was in and receive a white screen. There is only one error in the log file that says “invalid or expired session, please log in again”. Clearing cookies brings up a login screen, but once I log in again I get the same white screen.

2

My next step in testing this is to backup the database, drop it, and start fresh to see if it’s an issue with database data/schema or an issue with config/install. Any advice is appreciated. Not sure when I’ll get around to this as server is working for now and I can’t do anything during office hours.

3

I finally got around to debugging this a bit more. It seems to be something with my specific user account as everyone else who has tried can log in fine. I’m getting these two errors after I log in to mattermost in my browser:

react-dom.production.min.js:209 TypeError: Cannot read properties of null (reading 'length')
    at Xs.render (/static/797.e94eef9be44b2f24d85a.js:1:1393746)
    at zi (main.9941806088a10753f92b.js:2:6934243)
    at Bi (main.9941806088a10753f92b.js:2:6934038)
    at Es (main.9941806088a10753f92b.js:2:6969635)
    at mu (main.9941806088a10753f92b.js:2:6961077)
    at du (main.9941806088a10753f92b.js:2:6961002)
    at ru (main.9941806088a10753f92b.js:2:6958032)
    at main.9941806088a10753f92b.js:2:6909698
    at t.unstable_runWithPriority (main.9941806088a10753f92b.js:2:7021098)
    at Gn (main.9941806088a10753f92b.js:2:6909407)
as @ react-dom.production.min.js:209
status_dropdown.tsx:296 Uncaught (in promise) TypeError: Cannot read properties of null (reading 'length')
    at Xs.render (/static/797.e94eef9be44b2f24d85a.js:1:1393746)
    at zi (main.9941806088a10753f92b.js:2:6934243)
    at Bi (main.9941806088a10753f92b.js:2:6934038)
    at Es (main.9941806088a10753f92b.js:2:6969635)
    at mu (main.9941806088a10753f92b.js:2:6961077)
    at du (main.9941806088a10753f92b.js:2:6961002)
    at ru (main.9941806088a10753f92b.js:2:6958032)
    at main.9941806088a10753f92b.js:2:6909698
    at t.unstable_runWithPriority (main.9941806088a10753f92b.js:2:7021098)
    at Gn (main.9941806088a10753f92b.js:2:6909407)