Upgrading NetBox with plugins installed

NetBox is an excellent open source IP Address Management (IPAM) and DataCenter Infrastructure Management (DCIM) with a huge amount of built-in functionality. For anything that isn’t covered out-of-the-box, there is also a wealth of third party plugins.

One of these plugins is NetBox Inventory which adds asset tracking functionality, however the installation instructions seem to forget to mention that you need to create an “/opt/netbox/local_requirements.txt” file with “netbox-inventory” in it (or append this to the file if it already exists) and this also isn’t covered by the official NetBox plugin installation documentation.

If this isn’t done, then NetBox upgrades will fail during the database migrations because the Python venv gets recreated by the /opt/netbox/upgrade.sh script and so the “netbox-inventory” package will be missing:

Skipping local dependencies (local_requirements.txt not found)
Applying database migrations (python3 netbox/manage.py migrate)...
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/opt/netbox/netbox/netbox/settings.py", line 801, in <module>
    plugin = importlib.import_module(plugin_name)
             ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
  File "/usr/lib/python3.12/importlib/__init__.py", line 90, in import_module
    return _bootstrap._gcd_import(name[level:], package, level)
           ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
  File "<frozen importlib._bootstrap>", line 1387, in _gcd_import
  File "<frozen importlib._bootstrap>", line 1360, in _find_and_load
  File "<frozen importlib._bootstrap>", line 1324, in _find_and_load_unlocked
ModuleNotFoundError: No module named 'netbox_inventory'

During handling of the above exception, another exception occurred:
netbox-inventory

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/opt/netbox/netbox/manage.py", line 10, in <module>
    execute_from_command_line(sys.argv)
  File "/opt/netbox/venv/lib/python3.12/site-packages/django/core/management/__init__.py", line 442, in execute_from_command_line
    utility.execute()
  File "/opt/netbox/venv/lib/python3.12/site-packages/django/core/management/__init__.py", line 436, in execute
    self.fetch_command(subcommand).run_from_argv(self.argv)
  File "/opt/netbox/venv/lib/python3.12/site-packages/django/core/management/base.py", line 405, in run_from_argv
    parser = self.create_parser(argv[0], argv[1])
             ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
  File "/opt/netbox/venv/lib/python3.12/site-packages/django/core/management/base.py", line 368, in create_parser
    self.add_arguments(parser)
  File "/opt/netbox/venv/lib/python3.12/site-packages/django/core/management/commands/migrate.py", line 50, in add_arguments
    choices=tuple(connections),
            ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
  File "/opt/netbox/venv/lib/python3.12/site-packages/django/utils/connection.py", line 73, in __iter__
    return iter(self.settings)
                ^^^^^^^^^^^^^
  File "/opt/netbox/venv/lib/python3.12/site-packages/django/utils/functional.py", line 47, in __get__
    res = instance.__dict__[self.name] = self.func(instance)
                                         ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
  File "/opt/netbox/venv/lib/python3.12/site-packages/django/utils/connection.py", line 45, in settings
    self._settings = self.configure_settings(self._settings)
                     ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
  File "/opt/netbox/venv/lib/python3.12/site-packages/django/db/utils.py", line 148, in configure_settings
    databases = super().configure_settings(databases)
                ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
  File "/opt/netbox/venv/lib/python3.12/site-packages/django/utils/connection.py", line 50, in configure_settings
    settings = getattr(django_settings, self.settings_name)
               ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
  File "/opt/netbox/venv/lib/python3.12/site-packages/django/conf/__init__.py", line 81, in __getattr__
    self._setup(name)
  File "/opt/netbox/venv/lib/python3.12/site-packages/django/conf/__init__.py", line 68, in _setup
    self._wrapped = Settings(settings_module)
                    ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
  File "/opt/netbox/venv/lib/python3.12/site-packages/django/conf/__init__.py", line 166, in __init__
    mod = importlib.import_module(self.SETTINGS_MODULE)
          ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
  File "/usr/lib/python3.12/importlib/__init__.py", line 90, in import_module
    return _bootstrap._gcd_import(name[level:], package, level)
           ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
  File "<frozen importlib._bootstrap>", line 1387, in _gcd_import
  File "<frozen importlib._bootstrap>", line 1360, in _find_and_load
  File "<frozen importlib._bootstrap>", line 1331, in _find_and_load_unlocked
  File "<frozen importlib._bootstrap>", line 935, in _load_unlocked
  File "<frozen importlib._bootstrap_external>", line 999, in exec_module
  File "<frozen importlib._bootstrap>", line 488, in _call_with_frames_removed
  File "/opt/netbox/netbox/netbox/settings.py", line 804, in <module>
    raise ImproperlyConfigured(
django.core.exceptions.ImproperlyConfigured: Unable to import plugin netbox_inventory: Module not found. Check that the plugin module has been installed within the correct Python environment.