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Content Deployment and Object Reference Not Set to an Instance

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We have been having this error for quite some time, and very randomly.  It's not that the exception happens often, it's that when it does happen, it breaks that Content Deployment Job until you delete it (along with the path).

 

As it turns out, reading through the May 20th WSS fix, there was the same error but in what seems to be another situation.  Basically, the error occurs with Quick Deployments.

 

So we tried to break the environment and found out how :

  • You need to activate Quick Deployments
  • While the Quick Deploy job is running (it's fast, good luck!), you need to flag a page to be quick deployed at the same time.
  • You will get "Object Reference Not Set to an Instance" for that Quick Deploy job
  • The next execution of the job will run fine.

What the article doesn't mention is that if you have the following:

  • You have either an Incremental or Full deployment job that is currently running
  • You have a Quick Deploy job that is also running at the same time
  • You flag a page to be quick deployed during all this
  • You will get "Object Reference Not Set to an Instance" for that Quick Deploy job
  • You will also get "Object Reference Not Set to an Instance" for the Incremental/Full job
  • The Incremental/Full Job will not work until you delete the path/jobs;  The subsequent Quick Deploy job executions will run fine.

 

As for the WSS + MOSS May 20th patches, they are still private and I do not recommend installing a private hotfix in production unless every other option have ran out.  When they become public, we'll test them here to see if it also fix the other job types.

 

Maxime

Comments

  • Anonymous
    June 17, 2008
    (Last updated June 17th with the Object Reference Not Set to an Instance)   SharePoint's Content