* I will be using a Ubuntu 18.04 VM, on GCP for setting up the test-network.

Aye Aye Captain!! 🚢, let’s sail…

2. Install golang

Don’t install golang using apt, because ubuntu generally maintains an older version of golang 😕. Use official website of golang to download it, and follow me:

a)Use curl or wget to download the current binary for Go from the official download page:

wget https://dl.google.com/go/go1.14.2.linux-amd64.tar.gz

b)Extract the tarball

c)Adjust the permissions and move the go directory to /usr/local:

d)Adjust the Path Variables in .bashrc

export GOPATH=$HOME/go
export PATH=$PATH:/usr/local/go/bin:$GOPATH/bin

e) Load the file commands into the current shell instance

Note: Always check the minimum-version of any of the pre-requisites to avoid hustle.

3. Enable docker to run on

4. Add you, user, to the docker group

5. Install Fabric binaries

6. Export path to your download location of fabric samples

export PATH=<path to download location>/bin:$PATH

You can see the following docker images pulled in your system now, by using

Okay, after all this you are now in stage to test the first-network example provided by hyperledger fabric.

Make sure there is no container related to Hyperledger Fabric is running before proceeding. Use these commands to stop them:

            or

Architecture of test-network:

The test-network which comes with Fabric v2.1 contains 2 Organizations with 1 Peer each and an Orderer organization with 1 peer.

You can see the ccp-generate.sh for knowing configurations related to orgs.

Also, configuration required to generate the crypto materials for peers and orders is present in yaml files in cryptogen folder.

Check out some snaps 📷 from crypto-config-org1.yaml file from the cryptogen folder:

You can see the Template Count set to 1. It corresponds to the fact that only one peer will be created for the org, and crypto material is generated for that only.

Let’s move to the demo in just three steps:

Step 1: Bringing up the test-network

./network.sh up

If everything completes smoothly, then you will be able to see the following three containers- two peers & one orderer.

So what actually happened in the previous command, the answer lies in the network.sh.

The command ./network.sh up itself calls two functions to create orgs and create consortium.

You can see that cryptogen is using the config files residing in organisations folder.

Note: One good enhancement in the test-network in v2.1 is that it also has an option to create identities using fabric-ca. Earlier version created the identities and crypto materials using cryptogen tool. So now it’s on you to choose the fabric-ca or cryptogen to generate the cryptographic materials for orgs. And, as matter fact Fabric doesn’t care at all about from where does the identities/certificates came. It just use them form verification and signing.

Similarly, the code to create org2 and orderer using config files from organisation folder is also present in the same function.

On the very next step, the createConsortium function will create a genesis block in the orderer system channel.

That’s all you have all the necessary containers up at this stage and we can move on the next step to create a channel for transactions between Org1 and Org2.

Step2: Creating a channel

The createChannel() function in network.sh will use createChannel.sh script residing in the scripts folder.

Take a look at the script and you will find, it performs the necessary tasks like updating the anchor peers, creating channel and making the peers to join the channel.

So let’s fire the function using:

Whoops, you are one step closer to test the network.

Okay, so the last step is to deploy the chaincode on the peers corresponding to the channel which you have just created.

Step3: Deploying the ChainCode

Check out the script deployCC.sh. It packages, install and instantiate the chaincode on peers.

We will discuss the chaincode structure in a separate blog. Hope I will write it soon 👯 .

Now you are free to interact with chaincodes. But…

From Fabric v2.0, Docker daemon dependency has been eliminated. So, now you can directly use the peer CLI to interact with your network.

To interact first with the peer CLI make sure:

After that you are ready to go, you just need to export environment variables for Org1, if you want to use that.

After that, you are ready to go to interact with the chaincode installed on the peer.

So, let’s try the query command:

Similarly, you can invoke other methods of chaincode.

You can also use some other chaincode residing in the chaincode folder of fabric-samples by modifying the deployCC script, or even you can test your own chaincode on the test-network.

Celebrate, you are now aware of managing a Hyperledger Fabric simple network and taking the reference of this test-network, you can design your own network and feel like a Blockchain Architect.

Feel free to discuss some of the errors you may encounter while setting up the network, in the comments.

I’m leaving my bash.rc important exports in case you missed something:

Don’t forget to clap, if this blog saved your time 👏 👏 👏

References: