Failed to retrieve references for selected pages - Error on publishing a page

[#1]

Hi,

Whenever I try to publish a page after applying a Target Activity, Failed to retrieve references for selected pages error pops up on screen. This only happens when we have references applied to a page. 

Any pointers to rectify this ?

Thanks,

~Jay

[#2]

Hi, 

Can you please tell us steps to reproduce this?

~kautuk

[#3]

Hi,

I'm sure you must have fixed this by now but answering so that others can fix this.

I had been facing this problem whenever I was trying to publish a page along with a NullPointerException in the logs [1]. On further digging, I found that AEM tries to find references for the page, including the configurations inside /etc/cloudservices (and I'm sure there could be more).

In my case, a jcr:content node was missing under one of the configurations which was leading to the NPE and the "Failed to retrieve references.." error. I simply copied a jcr:content  node from other configs and removed the unnecessary properties, except the sling:resourceType property and was able to fix the error.

java.lang.NullPointerException: null

  at com.day.cq.wcm.webservicesupport.impl.ConfigurationReferenceProvider.findReferences(ConfigurationReferenceProvider.java:86)

  at com.day.cq.wcm.core.impl.reference.ActivationReferenceSearchServlet.doGet(ActivationReferenceSearchServlet.java:115)

  at org.apache.sling.api.servlets.SlingSafeMethodsServlet.mayService(SlingSafeMethodsServlet.java:269)

  at org.apache.sling.api.servlets.SlingSafeMethodsServlet.service(SlingSafeMethodsServlet.java:345)

  at org.apache.sling.api.servlets.SlingSafeMethodsServlet.service(SlingSafeMethodsServlet.java:376)

[#4]

I am unable to publish pages only while assets/experience fragments , everything is getting published.

I am using AEM 6.5. No logs are getting generated.