It looks like Spark 1.5.1 does not work with IPv6. When adding -Djava.net.preferIPv6Addresses=true on my dual stack server, the driver fails with:
15/10/14 14:36:01 ERROR SparkContext: Error initializing SparkContext. java.lang.AssertionError: assertion failed: Expected hostname at scala.Predef$.assert(Predef.scala:179) at org.apache.spark.util.Utils$.checkHost(Utils.scala:805) at org.apache.spark.storage.BlockManagerId.<init>(BlockManagerId.scala:48) at org.apache.spark.storage.BlockManagerId$.apply(BlockManagerId.scala:107) at org.apache.spark.storage.BlockManager.initialize(BlockManager.scala:190) at org.apache.spark.SparkContext.<init>(SparkContext.scala:528) at org.apache.spark.repl.SparkILoop.createSparkContext(SparkILoop.scala:1017) Looking at the checkHost method, it clearly does not work for IPv6 as it assumes : is not a valid part of the hostname. I think this code should use Guava's HostAndPort or related classes to properly deal with IPv4 and IPv6 (and other parts of Utils already use Guava). cheers, Tom