Sitefinity upgrade from 8.2 to 12.2 - Build succeeded but while running the project it gets stuck in between and nothing seems to be happening

Question

I was trying to upgrade Sitefinity from 8.2 to 12.2 using the Sitefinity upgrade document. https://www.progress.com/documentation/sitefinity-cms/122/upgrade-from-sitefinity-cms-8.0-and-below

Steps followed :

1. Uninstalled the old version from Nuget
2. Changed the .Net framework to 4.7.2
3. Reinstall all packages
4. Added few properties in assemblyinfo.cs
5. Installed Sitefinity 12.2
6. Uninstalled Thunder, Dropbox libraries, Telerik.Sitefinity.MobileAppBuilder, Telerik.Sitefinity.DAM Telerik.Sitefinity.EverliveConnector

Now the build is successful but it is getting stuck. Need some help with this. Is it ok to directly upgrade from 8.2 to 12.2 or upgrade from 8.2 to 10 and from 10 to 12.2? Which approach is preferred?

Answer 1

From the error messages in the comments of your post:

Value of 'null' is not valid for 'stream'... 
Telerik.Sitefinity.Modules.Pages.PageTemplateHelper.UpdateDefaultTemplateImages(PageManager pageManager, LibrariesManager librariesManager, Album album) at Telerik.Sitefinity.Modules.Libraries.LibrariesModule.Upgrade(SiteInitializer initializer, Version upgradeFrom) at Telerik.Sitefinity.Services.ModuleBase.Install(SiteInitializer initializer, Version upgradeFrom) at Telerik.Sitefinity.Services.SystemManager.InitializeModuleTelerik.Sitefinity.Modules.Pages.PageTemplateHelper.UpdateDefaultTemplateImages(PageManager pageManager, LibrariesManager librariesManager, Album album) at 
Telerik.Sitefinity.Modules.Libraries.LibrariesModule.Upgrade
(SiteInitializer initializer, Version upgradeFrom) at Telerik.Sitefinity.Services.ModuleBase
.Install(SiteInitializer initializer, Version upgradeFrom) at Telerik.Sitefinity.Services.SystemManager.InitializeModule

It looks the upgrade fails due to a problem with a page template thumbnail.

I suggest you run this SQL script towards the database - it will return all Image records (media content) for the page template thumbnails:

select * from sf_media_content as mc
join sf_content_link as cl
on cl.child_item_id = mc.content_id
where parent_item_type = 'Telerik.Sitefinity.Pages.Model.PageTemplate'

Have a look at the returned results and see if any of them looks suspicious.

Export the results to csv for easy access.

Then do a database backup.

Then, you can pick one of the images, e.g. one with default_url of: /images/SystemLibrariesProvider/template-thumbnails/mvc_default and record its content_id, e.g. 78EB6662-F8C9-4A2E-85CA-966898D433F1

Then execute this SQL:

update sf_content_link
set child_item_id = '78EB6662-F8C9-4A2E-85CA-966898D433F1'
where parent_item_type = 'Telerik.Sitefinity.Pages.Model.PageTemplate'

Then kill the process and start the site.

If that image is good, the upgrade should proceed, if you were not lucky - then pick another content_id from your CSV and run the same update sql script with the new Id. Restart and repeat until it works.

If all is good - you will end up with all page templates having the same thumbnail, but that's not a critical issue and can be fixed later.