Installing HBase over HDFS on a Single Ubuntu Box

I faced some issues making HBase run over HDFS on my Ubuntu box. This is a informal step-by-step guide from setting up HDFS to running HBase on a single Ubuntu machine.

1. Download hadoop (hadoop-0.20.203.0rc1.tar.gz)and install it following this great tutorial http://www.michael-noll.com/tutorials/running-hadoop-on-ubuntu-linux-single-node-cluster/. I installed on my system user rather than creating hduser. Make sure the 4 files (core-site.xml, hadoop-env.sh, hdfs-site.xml, mapred-site.xml) under hadoop/conf folder have values as shown below. Check the hadoop is working fine by running wordcount example as mentioned in tutorial. Also update .bashrc files with required variables.core-site.xml

   <?xml version="1.0"?>
   <?xml-stylesheet type="text/xsl" href="configuration.xsl"?>
   
   <!-- Put site-specific property overrides in this file. -->
   
   <configuration>
   
   <property>
     <name>hadoop.tmp.dir</name>
     <value>/home/shekhar/hadoop-data</value>
     <description>A base for other temporary directories.</description>
   </property>
   
   <property>
     <name>fs.default.name</name>
     <value>hdfs://localhost:54310</value>
     <description>The name of the default file system.  A URI whose
     scheme and authority determine the FileSystem implementation.  The
     uri's scheme determines the config property (fs.SCHEME.impl) naming
     the FileSystem implementation class.  The uri's authority is used to
     determine the host, port, etc. for a filesystem.</description>
   </property>
   
   </configuration>
   
   
   <strong>hdfs-site.xml</strong>
   
   <?xml version="1.0"?>
   <?xml-stylesheet type="text/xsl" href="configuration.xsl"?>
   
   <!-- Put site-specific property overrides in this file. -->
   
   <configuration>
   
   <property>
     <name>dfs.replication</name>
     <value>1</value>
     <description>Default block replication.
     The actual number of replications can be specified when the file is created.
     The default is used if replication is not specified in create time.
     </description>
   </property>
   
   </configuration>
   

   mapred-site.xml

   <?xml version="1.0"?>
   <?xml-stylesheet type="text/xsl" href="configuration.xsl"?>
   
   <!-- Put site-specific property overrides in this file. -->
   
   <configuration>
   
   <property>
     <name>mapred.job.tracker</name>
     <value>localhost:54311</value>
     <description>The host and port that the MapReduce job tracker runs
     at.  If "local", then jobs are run in-process as a single map
     and reduce task.
     </description>
   </property>
   
   </configuration>
   

   hadoop-env.sh

   # Set Hadoop-specific environment variables here.
   
   # The only required environment variable is JAVA_HOME.  All others are
   # optional.  When running a distributed configuration it is best to
   # set JAVA_HOME in this file, so that it is correctly defined on
   # remote nodes.
   
   # The java implementation to use.  Required.
   export JAVA_HOME=/usr/lib/jvm/java-6-sun-1.6.0.26
   
   # Extra Java CLASSPATH elements.  Optional.
   # export HADOOP_CLASSPATH=
   
   # The maximum amount of heap to use, in MB. Default is 1000.
   # export HADOOP_HEAPSIZE=2000
   
   # Extra Java runtime options.  Empty by default.
   # export HADOOP_OPTS=-server
   
   # Command specific options appended to HADOOP_OPTS when specified
   export HADOOP_NAMENODE_OPTS="-Dcom.sun.management.jmxremote $HADOOP_NAMENODE_OPTS"
   export HADOOP_SECONDARYNAMENODE_OPTS="-Dcom.sun.management.jmxremote $HADOOP_SECONDARYNAMENODE_OPTS"
   export HADOOP_DATANODE_OPTS="-Dcom.sun.management.jmxremote $HADOOP_DATANODE_OPTS"
   export HADOOP_BALANCER_OPTS="-Dcom.sun.management.jmxremote $HADOOP_BALANCER_OPTS"
   export HADOOP_JOBTRACKER_OPTS="-Dcom.sun.management.jmxremote $HADOOP_JOBTRACKER_OPTS"
   # export HADOOP_TASKTRACKER_OPTS=
   # The following applies to multiple commands (fs, dfs, fsck, distcp etc)
   # export HADOOP_CLIENT_OPTS
   
   # Extra ssh options.  Empty by default.
   # export HADOOP_SSH_OPTS="-o ConnectTimeout=1 -o SendEnv=HADOOP_CONF_DIR"
   
   # Where log files are stored.  $HADOOP_HOME/logs by default.
   # export HADOOP_LOG_DIR=${HADOOP_HOME}/logs
   
   # File naming remote slave hosts.  $HADOOP_HOME/conf/slaves by default.
   # export HADOOP_SLAVES=${HADOOP_HOME}/conf/slaves
   
   # host:path where hadoop code should be rsync'd from.  Unset by default.
   # export HADOOP_MASTER=master:/home/$USER/src/hadoop
   
   # Seconds to sleep between slave commands.  Unset by default.  This
   # can be useful in large clusters, where, e.g., slave rsyncs can
   # otherwise arrive faster than the master can service them.
   # export HADOOP_SLAVE_SLEEP=0.1
   
   # The directory where pid files are stored. /tmp by default.
   # export HADOOP_PID_DIR=/var/hadoop/pids
   
   # A string representing this instance of hadoop. $USER by default.
   # export HADOOP_IDENT_STRING=$USER
   
   # The scheduling priority for daemon processes.  See 'man nice'.
   # export HADOOP_NICENESS=10
   

2. Download HBase(version hbase-0.90.4.tar.gz). Update hbase-site.xml in hbase/conf folder with required properties.
   hbase-site.xml

   <?xml version="1.0"?>
   <?xml-stylesheet type="text/xsl" href="configuration.xsl"?>
   <configuration>
   
   	<property>
   		<name>hbase.rootdir</name>
       		<value>hdfs://localhost:54310/hbase</value>
   	</property>
   
   	<property>
   		<name>dfs.replication</name>
   		<value>1</value>
   	</property>
   
   	<property>
   	      <name>hbase.zookeeper.property.clientPort</name>
   	      <value>2222</value>
   	      <description>Property from ZooKeeper's config zoo.cfg.
   	      The port at which the clients will connect.
   	      </description>
       	</property>
   	<property>
   	      <name>hbase.zookeeper.quorum</name>
   	      <value>localhost</value>
   	      <description>Comma separated list of servers in the ZooKeeper Quorum.
   	      For example, "host1.mydomain.com,host2.mydomain.com,host3.mydomain.com".
   	      By default this is set to localhost for local and pseudo-distributed modes
   	      of operation. For a fully-distributed setup, this should be set to a full
   	      list of ZooKeeper quorum servers. If HBASE_MANAGES_ZK is set in hbase-env.sh
   	      this is the list of servers which we will start/stop ZooKeeper on.
   	      </description>
   	</property>
       <property>
         <name>hbase.zookeeper.property.dataDir</name>
         <value>/home/shekhar/zookeeper</value>
         <description>Property from ZooKeeper's config zoo.cfg.
         The directory where the snapshot is stored.
         </description>
       </property>
   
   </configuration>
   

   Update hbase-env.sh so that HBase should manage ZooKeeper.

   # Tell HBase whether it should manage it's own instance of Zookeeper or not.
   export HBASE_MANAGES_ZK=true
   

3. Run hbase using ./start-hbase.sh in bin folder. You will see following exception in log file.

   2011-12-06 13:59:29,979 FATAL org.apache.hadoop.hbase.master.HMaster: Unhandled exception. Starting shutdown.
   java.io.IOException: Call to localhost/127.0.0.1:54310 failed on local exception: java.io.EOFException
   
   2011-12-06 13:59:30,577 INFO org.apache.zookeeper.ClientCnxn: Opening socket connection to server localhost/127.0.0.1:2181
   2011-12-06 13:59:30,577 WARN org.apache.zookeeper.ClientCnxn: Session 0x134127deaaf0002 for server null, unexpected error, closing socket connection and attempting reconnect
   java.net.ConnectException: Connection refused
   at sun.nio.ch.SocketChannelImpl.checkConnect(Native Method)
   at sun.nio.ch.SocketChannelImpl.finishConnect(SocketChannelImpl.java:567)
   at org.apache.zookeeper.ClientCnxn$SendThread.run(ClientCnxn.java:1119)
   

   Kill the HBase using kill -9 <processid>

4. The exception in step 3 is because hadoop jar in hbase lib directory is different from the one used in hadoop. Copy the hadoop-core-0.20.203.0.jar in hadoop folder to the hbase/lib folder.
5. start the hbase again using ./start-hbase.sh and you will get another exception

   2011-12-06 14:51:05,778 FATAL org.apache.hadoop.hbase.master.HMaster: Unhandled exception. Starting shutdown.
   java.lang.NoClassDefFoundError: org/apache/commons/configuration/Configuration
   

   Kill the HBase using kill -9 <proceesid>

6. To fix this copy commons-configuration-1.6.jar from hadoop lib folder to hbase lib folder.
7. Start the hbase again using ./start-hbase.sh it should start fine now and you should be able to see hbase running at http://localhost:60010/master.jsp . If you see a valid page coming
   hbase has started fine.