Running Kafka on Windows 10 fails: The system cannot find the path specified

Question

I'm trying to run Kafka locally. I've got Zookeeper installed and running. I've downloaded the binaries for Kafka 2.11-1.1.0. I've adjusted the location of the logs in server.config, to a valid path. When I run .\bin\windows\kafka-server-start.bat .\config\server.properties, I get an error that says

The system cannot find the path specified.

I can see that both those files exist on my computer in the proper locations-what should I be troubleshooting?

Answer 1

I faced this issue while running the kafka-server-start.bat command. I double checked to ensure that there was no spaces in the kafka binaries path as well as correct syntax in JAVA_HOME.

Finally realized that the issue was due to a space in the JAVA_HOME path.

C:\Program Files\Java\jdk1.8.0_144

There is a space between Program and Files. I changed the directory of Java and updated the JAVA_HOME variable to

C:\Java\jdk1.7.0_51

This change solved my issue. I used the setx command to change the value in JAVA_HOME.

setx -m JAVA_HOME "C:\Java\jdk1.7.0_51"

Answer 2

As many have mentioned, this can happen if any of the kafka *.bat scripts that you run ( including zookeeper) refer to a bad JAVA_HOME system variable, or one containing a space.

You can solve this by changing JAVA_HOME to the shortened path name. For example

set JAVA_HOME=C:\Progra~1\Java\jdk-11.0.1

P.S.

For convenience, I created a CMD desktop shortcut that sets the JAVA_HOME to be right for Kafka, and CDs to my kafka installation. My Desktop shortcut is as follows:

%windir%\System32\cmd.exe /k set JAVA_HOME=C:\Progra~1\Java\jdk-11.0.1&  f: & cd f:\kafka\kafka_2.12-2.2.0

Answer 3

Turns out that this error is being thrown by kafka-run-class.bat because the path to JAVA_HOME in system variables is malformed (in my case, I had added /bin to it.) Removing /bin from the path, and having it be an existing Java installation folder, makes everything run fine.

Answer 4

I facing same issue and fixed with below steps as following:

• Make sure your environment variable as:

  JAVA_HOME=C:\Program Files\Java\jdk1.8.0_261

  ZOOKEEPER_HOME=C:\apache-zookeeper-3.6.2

  KAFKA_HOME=C:\kafka_2.13-2.7.0

• Edit the 'Path' in system variable and type:
  %JAVA_HOME% / bin, %ZOOPKEEPER_HOME / bin and %KAFKA_HOME% / bin

• Now, open the terminal, Run zoopkeeper and kafka

  For Zoopkeeper: zkserver

  For Kafka: bin\windows\kafka-server-start.bat .\config\server.properties

It runs without an any issues and errors.