It appears that I were missing the *hive.metastore.uris* parameter. That one was not mentioned in the (several) blogs / tutorials that I had seen.
2012/11/24 Stephen Boesch <java...@gmail.com> > > It seems the customized hive-site.xml is not being read. It lives under > $HIVE_HOME/conf ( which happens to be /shared/hive/conf). I have tried > everything there is to try: set HIVE_CONF_DIR=/shared/hive/conf , added > --config /shared/hive/conf and added debugging to the hive shell script > (bash -x) to ensure that the correct directory is actually getting used > > The properties inside hive-site.xml are getting ignored: originally set to > using mysql , but instead the default derby is getting used. Then tried > changing hive.metastore.local between true and false: no difference in > behavior - just going to /tmp/$USER for creating the derby no matter what. > > I wondered whether hive-site.xml maybe has a syntax error and were getting > ignored: so removed everything except <configuration></configuration>: > still no > > This is the totally simplified hive-site.xml: it just has enough to try to > see if it is actually being read/applied (and it is not..): > > > steve@mithril:/shared/hive/conf$ cat hive-site.xml > <?xml version="1.0"?> > <?xml-stylesheet type="text/xsl" href="configuration.xsl"?> > > <configuration> > > <!-- Hive Execution Parameters --> > <property> > <name>hive.metastore.local</name> > <value>false</value> > </property> > > <property> > <name>hive.exec.scratchdir</name> > <value>/tmp/hive/hive-${user.name}</value> > <description>Scratch space for Hive jobs</description> > </property> > > <property> > <name>hive.hwi.war.file</name> > <value>/shared/hive/lib/hive-hwi-0.9.0.war</value> > <description>This is the WAR file with the jsp content for Hive Web > Interface</description> > </property> > > </configuration> > > > After running some DDL in hive, for example, no files are created > underneath /tmp/hive (instead they are going to /tmp/$USER which is > default - as if the custom hive-site.xml never existed. > > >