HipChat Server repeatedly throws Fatal Error

Problem

New deployments of HipChat Server, either during setup or soon after, will sometimes throw a Fatal Error that is seemingly impossible to get past.

Examples of the error include the following in the HipChat Web UI soon after logging in. This is most often seen on the https://hipchat.example.com/server_admin/setup_welcome page:

Fatal error: Call to a member function get_group() on a non-object in /hipchat-scm/web/application/controllers/application.php on line 1049

nginix.log may show errors similar to this:

PHP message: PHP Fatal error:  Call to a member function get_group() on a non-object 
in /hipchat-scm/web/application/controllers/application.php on line 937" while 
reading response header from upstream, client: <ipAddress>, server: , 
request: "GET /server_admin/setup_welcome HTTP/1.1", upstream: "fastcgi://127.0.0.1:9000", host: "<ipAddress>"

Steps to Reproduce

The problem doesn't reproduce all of the time, but when it does, it happens during or just after the initial configuration of HipChat Server when the VM is deployed. The root cause seems to center around something going wrong during the initial setup, causing it not to complete properly.

Actual Results

User logs in to the HipChat Server Web UI and can never get past the Fatal Error message, either to complete the setup or to use HipChat Server normally.

Expected Results

User can log in without being presented with the error message.

Workaround

We composed a knowledge base article a while back that discussed the issue:

• HipChat Server Throws Fatal Error During Setup

To work around the problem and allow the user to log in and start using HipChat and / or complete the setup, the following command can be run from the server's command line:

hipchat service --disable-setup-wizard