The cipher and / or key length are invalid. - why?

@osherdo The value of your app key has to be 32 characters.

@martinbean then what do I do? I've just cloned from a repo in github.

Make sure you have .env file at root dir and then

php artisan key:generate

@osherdo Set the value of APP_KEY to something that’s 32 characters long, and then run php artisan key:generate to generate a random, 32-character key.

oddly I don't have .env file. what do I do?

@osherdo please list your development environment settings.

Linux Uubntu and using Laravel 5.1

@osherdo For the second time, humbly asking you to take some time out to familiarise yourself with laravel framework https://laracasts.com/series/laravel-5-fundamentals. The questions you have are very very basic.

I am not saying we won't be helping but going through the tutorials once will definitely improve your learning/performance curve.

@premsaurav before I am asking questions here - I am referring to the documentation and forums. only when I cannot find the answer/solution I am coming here to ask questions and get wiser. So I clearly say I couldn't find reliable source about how do I generate the .env file.

You say that but then I take 3 seconds to open up a new tab, go to laravel.com and check the install docs.

Application Key

The next thing you should do after installing Laravel is set your application key to a random string. If you installed Laravel via Composer or the Laravel installer, this key has already been set for you by the key:generate command. Typically, this string should be 32 characters long. The key can be set in the .env environment file. If you have not renamed the .env.example file to .env, you should do that now. If the application key is not set, your user sessions and other encrypted data will not be secure!

https://laravel.com/docs/5.2/installation

too bad I forgot to tell you that even though I ran key:generate and no .env file has been generated.

There's no reference to how do I generate a new .env file in what you gave me. I also red that before you and it did not helped me really.

So basically right now there's NO env. file what so ever.

so .ENV file is shown at the sublime text editor but not in the folder itself -noted it just now.

If you clone the repo from GitHub, you have to rename or copy the .env.example to .env

This explains it all for me;

The key can be set in the .env environment file. If you have not renamed the .env.example file to .env, you should do that now.

You should be using this if you're confused by the install instructions :P

composer create-project laravel/laravel folder-name

@bashy isn't creating a whole new project?

That's how you'd install a project, yes. But you'd see the commands it does which are listed in the composer.json file.

You should learn that before pulling repos from GitHub. Just my thoughts.

okay thanks. will look for it indeed @bashy