how to uninstall plugins not to break site

[danie-dejager]

Hi,

What are the steps to remove / uninstall plugins? I run 3.3.4 and when I removed the installed plugin from configuration.py I got an error page to Netbox and could no longer access it. I had to put the plugin back in the config.

TIA

[bogdancordos]

I think you need to remove the plugin from configuration.py, as you did, and from local_requirements.txt then do a ./upgrade.sh

[danie-dejager]

That's exactly what I did but thereafter the Netbox frontend was no longer available. I had to add the plugin back.

[bogdancordos]

What plugin are we talking about, if I may ask? And what error you get after uninstall?

[danie-dejager]

It is the Netbox-DNS plugin specifically but when I remove the netbox_secretstore plugin I get the same issue.

Here are my steps:

1. vi configuration.py and remove plugins. Currently it looks like this
   PLUGINS = ["netbox_secretstore","netbox_topology_views"]
2. remove plugin from local_requirements.txt

→ cat local_requirements.txt
netbox-topology-views
netbox-secretstore
#netbox-dns
social-auth-app-django

4. ran upgrade
   PYTHON=/usr/bin/python3.8 /opt/netbox/upgrade.sh
5. restarted
   systemctl restart netbox netbox-rq

Server Error:
There was a problem with your request. Please contact an administrator.

The complete exception is provided below:

<class 'TypeError'>

init() missing 1 required positional argument: 'strategy'

Python version: 3.8.5
NetBox version: 3.3.5

When I return the plugin
PLUGINS = ["netbox_secretstore","netbox_topology_views","netbox_dns"]
and add it back to local_requirements.txt the site works again

[danie-dejager]

I found that as I had an older install that I kept upgrading and by using Azure AD I had a slightly different default config than the latest version. Somehow the social-auth plugin cause all this confusion. Once I reconfigured configuration.py from scratch and only adding back what is needed I no longer had this issue.

The issue was never that the plugins being removed broke the Netbox UI but rather an incorrect configuration to make AzureAD SSO work.