Hyperledger Fabric: Load -> CRIT 002 Error reading configuration: Unsupported Config Type “”

Problem

I was following this Hyperledger Fabric tutorial: Building Your First Network

It explains about two ways to build and start your network.

One is via a shell script called byfn.sh which is simple to use and runs all the commands at once.

The other approach is running each and every command manually. This way, we get to know the process flow and step-by-step process of building the blockchain network.

I was following the manual approach and when I ran the following command to create peer channel:

peer channel create -o orderer.example.com:7050 -c $CHANNEL_NAME -f ./channel-artifacts/channel.tx --tls --cafile /opt/gopath/src/github.com/hyperledger/fabric/peer/crypto/ordererOrganizations/example.com/orderers/orderer.example.com/msp/tlscacerts/tlsca.example.com-cert.pem

I got the following error message:

[configtx/tool/localconfig] Load -> CRIT 002 Error reading configuration: Unsupported Config Type “”
panic: Error reading configuration: Unsupported Config Type “”

Solution

Regarding this error, the troubleshooting section in the Build Your First Network tutorial page says the following:

If you are getting this error then the probable cause is:

– You did not set the FABRIC_CFG_PATH environment variable properly.
– The configtxgen tool needs this variable in order to locate the configtx.yaml.
– Go back and execute an export FABRIC_CFG_PATH=$PWD, then recreate your channel artifacts.

In my case, I had set the FABRIC_CFG_PATH environment variable correctly.

When I echo the FABRIC_CFG_PATH, then it shows the directory path of the fabric-samples/first-network directory where I am working on right now.

echo $FABRIC_CFG_PATH;

The actual cause of this error in my case was that I was not inside the CLI container to execute the peer channel create command.

You need to enter the CLI container using the docker exec command:

docker exec -it cli bash

If successful you should see the following:

root@0d78bb69300d:/opt/gopath/src/github.com/hyperledger/fabric/peer#

Over there, you should run the peer channel create command like this:

root@0d78bb69300d:/opt/gopath/src/github.com/hyperledger/fabric/peer# peer channel create -o orderer.example.com:7050 -c $CHANNEL_NAME -f ./channel-artifacts/channel.tx --tls --cafile /opt/gopath/src/github.com/hyperledger/fabric/peer/crypto/ordererOrganizations/example.com/orderers/orderer.example.com/msp/tlscacerts/tlsca.example.com-cert.pem

Before running this command, please note that you should also run commands for creating environment variables for CHANNEL_NAME and other Environment variables for PEER0 within this CLI Container. They are present just above the peer channel create command in the Build Your First Network tutorial page.

# Environment variables for PEER0

export CORE_PEER_MSPCONFIGPATH=/opt/gopath/src/github.com/hyperledger/fabric/peer/crypto/peerOrganizations/org1.example.com/users/Admin@org1.example.com/msp
export CORE_PEER_ADDRESS=peer0.org1.example.com:7051
export CORE_PEER_LOCALMSPID="Org1MSP"
export CORE_PEER_TLS_ROOTCERT_FILE=/opt/gopath/src/github.com/hyperledger/fabric/peer/crypto/peerOrganizations/org1.example.com/peers/peer0.org1.example.com/tls/ca.crt

export CHANNEL_NAME=mychannel

Hope this helps. Thanks.