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.
>
>
>
