William:
Many thanks!!! Your suggestions steered me in the right direction and I fixed the problem.
Now my findings for the benefit of others. I looked at the EventQueue table and the entry was there but with IsComplete set to False. The thing is that at that point I found that IsComplete was also False for some other modules (that have been working properly). So, I started researching and learning about this. To make the long story short, I found that after the last DNN upgrade (and maybe the previous one too) the Install.aspx script had not been run. Notice that at this point the parameters Portable, Searchable, and Upgradeable were blank (unchecked). After I ran the Install.aspx script the missing permissions appeared and the IsComplete flag was set to True for all the modules that had it as False previously. And the module parameters that were blank before are now checked.
Why, how did this happen you ask? Let me get this out of the way first, mi culpa (my fault). I was following an article on how to properly upgrade DNN to the latest version (author to remain nameless because the procedure is correct, my execution was flawed). In the procedure, he recommends to change the web.config flag “AutoUpgrade” to False so that the upgrade script runs only when you trigger it manually. And this is where I messed up. I did not run the script manually as recommended. Funny thing is that otherwise the site was working perfectly on the new version of DNN, 4.9.0.
Ok, I screwed up but, should DNN somehow check to make sure that the Install.aspx script has been run for the current version of DNN installed?
Again, thank you for your help.