"SchemaRegistryException: Failed to get Kafka cluster ID" for LOCAL setup

Question

I'm downloaded the .tz (I am on MAC) for confluent version 7.0.0 from the official confluent site and was following the setup for LOCAL (1 node) and Kafka/ZooKeeper are starting fine, but the Schema Registry keeps failing (Note, I am behind a corporate VPN)

The exception message in the SchemaRegistry logs is:

[2021-11-04 00:34:22,492] INFO Logging initialized @1403ms to org.eclipse.jetty.util.log.Slf4jLog (org.eclipse.jetty.util.log)
[2021-11-04 00:34:22,543] INFO Initial capacity 128, increased by 64, maximum capacity 2147483647. (io.confluent.rest.ApplicationServer)
[2021-11-04 00:34:22,614] INFO Adding listener: http://0.0.0.0:8081 (io.confluent.rest.ApplicationServer)
[2021-11-04 00:35:23,007] ERROR Error starting the schema registry (io.confluent.kafka.schemaregistry.rest.SchemaRegistryRestApplication)
io.confluent.kafka.schemaregistry.exceptions.SchemaRegistryException: Failed to get Kafka cluster ID
    at io.confluent.kafka.schemaregistry.storage.KafkaSchemaRegistry.kafkaClusterId(KafkaSchemaRegistry.java:1488)
    at io.confluent.kafka.schemaregistry.storage.KafkaSchemaRegistry.<init>(KafkaSchemaRegistry.java:166)
    at io.confluent.kafka.schemaregistry.rest.SchemaRegistryRestApplication.initSchemaRegistry(SchemaRegistryRestApplication.java:71)
    at io.confluent.kafka.schemaregistry.rest.SchemaRegistryRestApplication.configureBaseApplication(SchemaRegistryRestApplication.java:90)
    at io.confluent.rest.Application.configureHandler(Application.java:271)
    at io.confluent.rest.ApplicationServer.doStart(ApplicationServer.java:245)
    at org.eclipse.jetty.util.component.AbstractLifeCycle.start(AbstractLifeCycle.java:73)
    at io.confluent.kafka.schemaregistry.rest.SchemaRegistryMain.main(SchemaRegistryMain.java:44)
Caused by: java.util.concurrent.TimeoutException
    at java.util.concurrent.CompletableFuture.timedGet(CompletableFuture.java:1784)
    at java.util.concurrent.CompletableFuture.get(CompletableFuture.java:1928)
    at org.apache.kafka.common.internals.KafkaFutureImpl.get(KafkaFutureImpl.java:180)
    at io.confluent.kafka.schemaregistry.storage.KafkaSchemaRegistry.kafkaClusterId(KafkaSchemaRegistry.java:1486)
    ... 7 more

My schema-registry.properties file has bootstrap URL set to

kafkastore.bootstrap.servers=PLAINTEXT://localhost:9092

I saw some posts saying its the SchemaRegistry unable to connect to the KafkaCluster URL because of the localhost address potentially. I am fairly new to Kafka and basically just need this local setup to run a git repo that is utilizing some Topics/Kafka so my questions...

1. How can I fix this (I am behind a corporate VPN but I figured this shouldn't affect this)
2. Do I even need the SchemaRegistry?

Answer 1

I ended up just going with the Docker local setup inside, and the only change I had to make to the docker compose YAML was to change the schema-registry port (I changed it to 8082 or 8084, don't remember exactly but just an unused port that is not being used by some other Confluent service listed in the docker-compose.yaml) and my local setup is working fine now