Why am I getting the "panic: unable to bootstrap orderer. Error reading genesis block file: read /var/hyperledger/orderer/orderer.genesis.block: is a directory" error?

When you build and deploy your BYFN network manually, you may end up missing the genesis.block file.

Try to run the "docker-compose up" command again to deploy and start BYFN containers without the "--detach" option

$ cd ~/hyperledger-binaries/fabric-samples/first-network

$ docker-compose -f docker-compose-cli.yaml up

...
orderer.example.com  | FileLedger.Prefix = "hyperledger-fabric-ordererledger"
orderer.example.com  | RAMLedger.HistorySize = 1000
orderer.example.com  | Kafka.Retry.ShortInterval = 5s
...
orderer.example.com  | Kafka.Verbose = true
orderer.example.com  | Kafka.Version = 0.10.2.0
...
orderer.example.com  | Debug.BroadcastTraceDir = ""
orderer.example.com  | Debug.DeliverTraceDir = ""
orderer.example.com  | Consensus = map[WALDir:/var/hyperledger/production/orderer/etcdraft/wal \
   SnapDir:/var/hyperledger/production/orderer/etcdraft/snapshot]
orderer.example.com  | Operations.ListenAddress = "127.0.0.1:8443"
...
orderer.example.com  | Metrics.Statsd.Prefix = ""

orderer.example.com  | panic: unable to bootstrap orderer. Error reading \
   genesis block file: read /var/hyperledger/orderer/orderer.genesis.block: \
   is a directory
...

^C
Gracefully stopping... (press Ctrl+C again to force)
...

So the genesis block file is cause a problem. Let's check the local version in the hosting system:

$ ls -l channel-artifacts
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Apr  11 17:19 genesis.block

$ ls -l channel-artifacts/genesis.block/
total 0

The "genesis.block" file has been changed to an empty directory and owned by "root" now. Some thing happened to the file. We need to do the entire build and deploy process.

1. Generate certificates:

$ ../bin/cryptogen generate --config=./crypto-config.yaml

$ ls -l crypto-config
total 8
drwxr-xr-x 3 fyicenter fyicenter 4096 Apr  11 23:52 ordererOrganizations
drwxr-xr-x 4 fyicenter fyicenter 4096 Apr  11 23:52 peerOrganizations

2. Generate genesis block and bootstrap transactions:

$ export FABRIC_CFG_PATH=./

$ ../bin/configtxgen -profile TwoOrgsOrdererGenesis -channelID byfn-sys-channel \
   -outputBlock ./channel-artifacts/genesis.block
   
$ ../bin/configtxgen -profile TwoOrgsChannel -channelID mychannel \
   -outputCreateChannelTx ./channel-artifacts/channel.tx 

$ ../bin/configtxgen -profile TwoOrgsChannel -channelID mychannel -asOrg Org1MSP \
   -outputAnchorPeersUpdate ./channel-artifacts/Org1MSPanchors.tx 

$ ../bin/configtxgen -profile TwoOrgsChannel -channelID mychannel -asOrg Org2MSP \
   -outputAnchorPeersUpdate ./channel-artifacts/Org2MSPanchors.tx 
   
$ ls -l channel-artifacts
-rw-r--r-- 1 fyicenter fyicenter   284 Apr  11 23:59 Org1MSPanchors.tx
-rw-r--r-- 1 fyicenter fyicenter   284 Apr  11 23:59 Org2MSPanchors.tx
-rw-r--r-- 1 fyicenter fyicenter   346 Apr  11 23:57 channel.tx
-rw-r--r-- 1 fyicenter fyicenter 12980 Apr  11 23:56 genesis.block

3. Start the FYBN Docker containers:

$ docker-compose -f docker-compose-cli.yaml up --detach

$ docker ps --all 
IMAGE                              COMMAND            STATUS         NAMES

hyperledger/fabric-tools:latest    "/bin/bash"        Up 25 seconds  cli
hyperledger/fabric-orderer:latest  "orderer"          Up 33 seconds  orderer.example.com
hyperledger/fabric-peer:latest     "peer node start"  Up 32 seconds  peer1.org2.example.com
hyperledger/fabric-peer:latest     "peer node start"  Up 31 seconds  peer0.org1.example.com
hyperledger/fabric-peer:latest     "peer node start"  Up 34 seconds  peer1.org1.example.com
hyperledger/fabric-peer:latest     "peer node start"  Up 34 seconds  peer0.org2.example.com

All BYFN Docker containers are up and running.

⇒ CORE_PEER_* Environment Variables on BYFN CLI

⇐ BYFN CLI Container Missing Admin Certificates

⇑ BYFN (Build Your First Network)

⇑⇑ Hyperledger Tutorials