diff --git a/src/opnsense/mvc/app/controllers/OPNsense/CaptivePortal/Api/SessionController.php b/src/opnsense/mvc/app/controllers/OPNsense/CaptivePortal/Api/SessionController.php
index 489880b7e..5681b3db3 100644
--- a/src/opnsense/mvc/app/controllers/OPNsense/CaptivePortal/Api/SessionController.php
+++ b/src/opnsense/mvc/app/controllers/OPNsense/CaptivePortal/Api/SessionController.php
@@ -55,7 +55,7 @@ class SessionController extends ApiControllerBase
                 "captiveportal list_clients",
                 array($cpZone->zoneid, 'json')
             );
-            $allClients = json_decode($allClientsRaw, true);
+            $allClients = json_decode($allClientsRaw ?? '', true);
 
             return $allClients;
         } else {
diff --git a/src/opnsense/scripts/OPNsense/CaptivePortal/lib/db.py b/src/opnsense/scripts/OPNsense/CaptivePortal/lib/db.py
index 6ef07982b..d309ef7e6 100755
--- a/src/opnsense/scripts/OPNsense/CaptivePortal/lib/db.py
+++ b/src/opnsense/scripts/OPNsense/CaptivePortal/lib/db.py
@@ -70,7 +70,7 @@ class DB(object):
             self._connection = sqlite3.connect(self.database_filename)
 
         cur = self._connection.cursor()
-        cur.execute('SELECT count(*) FROM sqlite_master')
+        cur.execute("SELECT count(*) FROM sqlite_master where tbl_name = 'cp_clients'")
         if cur.fetchall()[0][0] == 0:
             # empty database, initialize database
             init_script_filename = '%s/../sql/init.sql' % os.path.dirname(os.path.abspath(__file__))