Hyperledger Composer: fabric-ca request register failed with errors after machine restart - hyperledger-composer

Question

I had a composer-rest-server running on a host. Due to some reason I had to reboot my aws instance. So I stopped all the fabric docker containers except the chaincode and also stopped the composer rest server.
After rebooting the machine, I restarted all the containers. At this time the chaincode container did not start. However, I issued a ping command with admin identity card and the chaincode container too started.
Next, I restarted the composer rest server with the same admin identity. However, when I tried to issue an "identitiy request" command for a participant it resulted in:
Unhandled error for request POST /api/system/identities/issue: Error: fabric-ca request register failed with errors [[{"code":20,"message":"Authorization failure"}]]
Does it mean the old admin identities are invalidated after a system restart?

Answer 1

This is occurring because when the AWS instance reboots, the identity data within the fabric-ca container is cleared (the container uses sqlite for an ephemeral data store).
If you instead setup the fabric-ca container to use a mysql or postgresql db container, you will be able to persist the identity data even after machine/container restarts.
This question also pertains to your situation as well Hyperledger Composer Identity Issue error after network restart (code:20, authorization failure)

Answer 2

This error is usually seen when you try and Issue a New Identity whilst using an Identity that does not have the rights to do so.
(If you are in single user mode the card you started the REST server with does not have the rights, or if in Multi-User mode the card currently being used in the Wallet does not have the rights.)
The Network Admin card initially created to administer the network has the rights to Issue New identities, and if you want to create additional Identities (Cards) that have the right you need to give them issuer rights when you create them. This is an option you use when Issuing an identity. On the CLI you would use a command such as composer identity issue -c admin#my-network --issuer -u mynewuser ...
On the REST server you would include an option in the JSON data e.g.:
{
"participant" : "org.acme.mynetwork.Manager#MGR02",
"userID" : "BrianM",
"options": {"issuer":true}
}