The only supported ciphers are AES-128-CBC and AES-256-CBC with the correct key lengths. laravel 5.3

Question

I installed a new fresh copy of Laravel 5.3 using composer but I\'m getting this error:

The only supported ciphers are AES-128-CBC and AES-256-CBC wit

Answer 1

Ok, this has basically already been answered, but I found a couple caveats that had be consternated, or constipated, one of those two...

First, as has already been said, you should ensure you have a valid .env file which you can accomplish in the terminal by copying the existing .env.example file as such:

$ cp .env.example .env

Then, generate your application Key

$ php artisan key:generate

Once this is done, make sure to open your .env file and ensure that the APP_KEY line looks correct - this is where my consternation came from:

APP_KEY=base64:MsUJo+qAhIVGPx52r1mbxCYn5YbWtCx8FQ7pTaHEvRo=base64:Ign7MpdXw4FMI5ai7SXXiU2vbraqhyEK1NniKPNJKGY=

You'll notice that the key length is wrong, it for some unknown reason (probably from running key:generate multiple times) has two base64= keys in there. Removing one is the fix to the problems I was having and this appears to be an Artisan/Laravel bug.

Hope this answer helps anyone who may be struggling with the same problems or annoying bug.