Unable to request channel creation using Rest Api

Question

I am following Balance-transfer of Hyper-ledger-fabric samples. I have modified it a little. I added 3rd organization. Everything goes fine till I try to create channel using

curl -s -X POST \ http://localhost:4000/channels \ -H "authorization: Bearer " \ -H "content-type: application/json" \ -d '{ "channelName":"mychannel", "channelConfigPath":"../artifacts/channel/mychannel.tx" }'

I get below errors:

error: [Orderer.js]: sendBroadcast - on error: "Error: Connect Failed\n at ClientDuplexStream._emitStatusIfDone (/home/atif/Desktop/hyper-ledger/fabric/fabric-samples/balance-transfer/node_modules/grpc/src/node/src/client.js:255:19)\n at ClientDuplexStream._readsDone (/home/atif/Desktop/hyper-ledger/fabric/fabric-samples/balance-transfer/node_modules/grpc/src/node/src/client.js:221:8)\n at readCallback (/home/atif/Desktop/hyper-ledger/fabric/fabric-samples/balance-transfer/node_modules/grpc/src/node/src/client.js:283:12)" [2018-02-19 15:40:04.991] [ERROR] Create-Channel - Error: SERVICE_UNAVAILABLE at ClientDuplexStream. (/home/atif/Desktop/hyper-ledger/fabric/fabric-samples/balance-transfer/node_modules/fabric-client/lib/Orderer.js:141:21) at emitOne (events.js:116:13) at ClientDuplexStream.emit (events.js:211:7) at ClientDuplexStream._emitStatusIfDone (/home/atif/Desktop/hyper-ledger/fabric/fabric-samples/balance-transfer/node_modules/grpc/src/node/src/client.js:258:12) at ClientDuplexStream._readsDone (/home/atif/Desktop/hyper-ledger/fabric/fabric-samples/balance-transfer/node_modules/grpc/src/node/src/client.js:221:8) at readCallback (/home/atif/Desktop/hyper-ledger/fabric/fabric-samples/balance-transfer/node_modules/grpc/src/node/src/client.js:283:12) (node:79777) UnhandledPromiseRejectionWarning: Unhandled promise rejection (rejection id: 2): Error: Failed to initialize the channel: Error: SERVICE_UNAVAILABLE (node:79777) [DEP0018] DeprecationWarning: Unhandled promise rejections are deprecated. In the future, promise rejections that are not handled will terminate the Node.js process with a non-zero exit code.

Answer 1

I'd recommend taking a look at the ordering service FAQ. When the ordering service returns an error of:

SERVICE_UNAVAILABLE

this almost always indicates a connection problem between the orderer and Kafka. This is usually due to one of two reasons:

1. The ordering service has not been given long enough to startup and Kafka is still performing leader election.
2. The Kafka cluster is misconfigured.

I would always encourage users to first become familiar with Kafka. Get the cluster up and running, and send receive messages to/from it, including from other hosts or containers, just like your orderer process will. Only then should you attempt to deploy Fabric on top of Kafka. There is a quickstart guide offered by Kafka which is a good place to start.