bitstream deletion issue since 9.2

[John Evans]

After updating to 9.2, we started seeing an issue where we are unable to delete any  bitstreams.  I can reproduce it both in the gui and with the REST interface.  Adding bitstreams is ok, it really does just seem to be deleting them that causes the problem.  

I do confess that during the 9.2 upgrade, I missed the solr search schema.xml step, but that's rectified, and it doesn't feel like that could be the issue.  As far as logs go, the dspace logs show items like

2025-12-23 20:09:14,206 ERROR 81947bcc-1096-4f52-824d-ead5b578631b ca1c69e2-be4f-4ddf-8557-e7c67577e116 org.dspace.app.rest.exception.DSpaceApiExceptionControllerAdvice @ An exception has occurred (status:500)
org.hibernate.PropertyAccessException: Null value was assigned to a property [class org.dspace.app.requestitem.RequestItem.accept_request] of primitive type: 'org.dspace.app.requestitem.RequestItem.accept_request' (setter)
at org.hibernate.property.access.spi.SetterFieldImpl.set(SetterFieldImpl.java:63)

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at org.hibernate.query.Query.getResultList(Query.java:120)
at org.dspace.core.AbstractHibernateDAO.executeCriteriaQuery(AbstractHibernateDAO.java:437)
at org.dspace.core.AbstractHibernateDAO.findAll(AbstractHibernateDAO.java:78)
at org.dspace.core.AbstractHibernateDAO.findAll(AbstractHibernateDAO.java:70)
at org.dspace.app.requestitem.RequestItemServiceImpl.findAll(RequestItemServiceImpl.java:170)
at org.dspace.content.BitstreamServiceImpl.delete(BitstreamServiceImpl.java:298)
at org.dspace.content.BitstreamServiceImpl.delete(BitstreamServiceImpl.java:47)
at org.dspace.app.rest.repository.patch.operation.BitstreamRemoveOperation.perform(BitstreamRemoveOperation.java:58)
at org.dspace.app.rest.repository.patch.operation.BitstreamRemoveOperation.perform(BitstreamRemoveOperation.java:40)
at org.dspace.app.rest.repository.patch.ResourcePatch.performPatchOperation(ResourcePatch.java:58)
at org.dspace.app.rest.repository.patch.ResourcePatch.patch(ResourcePatch.java:42)
at org.dspace.app.rest.repository.BitstreamRestRepository.patchBitstreamsInBulk(BitstreamRestRepository.java:278)
at java.base/jdk.internal.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke0(Native Method)

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org.springframework.aop.framework.CglibAopProxy$DynamicAdvisedInterceptor.intercept(CglibAopProxy.java:724)

at org.dspace.app.rest.repository.BitstreamRestRepository$$SpringCGLIB$$0.patchBitstreamsInBulk(<generated>)
at org.dspace.app.rest.BitstreamCategoryRestController.patch(BitstreamCategoryRestController.java:58)

at java.base/jdk.internal.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke0(Native Method)

Any suggestions?

[DSpace Technical Support]

Hi,

The error stacktrace seems to be saying that you have a "Request a Copy" for a Bitstream in the "requestitem" database table that has a "null" value in the "accept_request" column.  That column should be a boolean value instead.

So, it's possible there's some bad/invalid data that has somehow gotten into your "requestitem" database table.

Is this error happening for *every* bitstream you try to delete?  Or just a specific bitstream?  If it's one bitstream, then the bad data is likely linked up to that bitstream.  If it's every bitstream, then it's possible there's some corrupted row in your "requestitem" database table that's causing everything to fail... and either fixing that row or deleting it may solve the problem.

Those are my best guesses based on what you've shared.  I haven't seen this before yet, so I suspect it's "bad/invalid data".  But, if we start to hear that others are hitting this same issue, then it's always possible there's a bug somewhere in here.

Tim

[John Evans]

Hi Tim, sorry for late response.  It did seem for every request I would see that...  I actually have 20 such rows out of 669 that have accept_request as NULL.  I admit I've never looked at this table before, never had to.  As I look at the request_date column, all of the NULLs seem to come from a long time ago when we were on 6.x, and 669 rows in the requestitem table does seem like some cleanup on our part was missed.  I'll see if removing those old rows makes a difference.   Thanks.

[John Evans]

Removing those rows from the database seems to have fixed the issue.  We moved back to 9.2 on our dev instance and we can successfully delete bitstreams.