Hive Metastore Trick: "get_privilege_set failed"

Three kinds of Hive metastores are supported in Hive 0.7.1:

• Embeded
• Local
• Remote

It seems straight forward. Right? If MySQL metastore database is installed on serverA, and the Hive client is running on serverB, which one you should use? Definitely not Embedded. Should use "Remote"? Does this configuration hive-site.xml work?

<property>
  <name>hive.metastore.local</name>
  <value>false</value>
  <description>controls whether to connect to remove metastore server or open a new metastore server in Hive Client JVM</description>
</property>

<property>
  <name>hive.metastore.uris</name>
  <value>thrift://serverA:8003</value>
  <description>host and port for the thrift metastore server</description>
</property>

<property>
  <name>javax.jdo.option.ConnectionURL</name>
  <value>jdbc:mysql://chelhadedw002/metastore_dev</value>
  <description>JDBC connect string for a JDBC metastore</description>
</property>

<property>
  <name>javax.jdo.option.ConnectionDriverName</name>
  <value>com.mysql.jdbc.Driver</value>
  <description>Driver class name for a JDBC metastore</description>
</property>

<property>
  <name>javax.jdo.option.ConnectionUserName</name>
  <value>username</value>
</property>

<property>
  <name>javax.jdo.option.ConnectionPassword</name>
  <value>password</value>
</property>

Unfortunately this doesn't work correctly. We could run "show tables", but Hive threw the exception when we run a select statement like this

FAILED: Hive Internal Error: org.apache.hadoop.hive.ql.metadata.HiveException(org.apache.thrift.TApplicationException: get_privilege_set failed: unknown result)
org.apache.hadoop.hive.ql.metadata.HiveException: org.apache.thrift.TApplicationException: get_privilege_set failed: unknown result
        at org.apache.hadoop.hive.ql.metadata.Hive.get_privilege_set(Hive.java:1617)
        at org.apache.hadoop.hive.ql.security.authorization.DefaultHiveAuthorizationProvider.authorizeUserPriv(DefaultHiveAuthorizationProvider.java:201)
        at org.apache.hadoop.hive.ql.security.authorization.DefaultHiveAuthorizationProvider.authorizeUserAndDBPriv(DefaultHiveAuthorizationProvider.java:226)
        at org.apache.hadoop.hive.ql.security.authorization.DefaultHiveAuthorizationProvider.authorizeUserDBAndTable(DefaultHiveAuthorizationProvider.java:259)
        at org.apache.hadoop.hive.ql.security.authorization.DefaultHiveAuthorizationProvider.authorize(DefaultHiveAuthorizationProvider.java:159)
        at org.apache.hadoop.hive.ql.Driver.doAuthorization(Driver.java:531)
        at org.apache.hadoop.hive.ql.Driver.compile(Driver.java:393)
        at org.apache.hadoop.hive.ql.Driver.run(Driver.java:736)
        at org.apache.hadoop.hive.cli.CliDriver.processCmd(CliDriver.java:209)
        at org.apache.hadoop.hive.cli.CliDriver.processLine(CliDriver.java:286)
        at org.apache.hadoop.hive.cli.CliDriver.main(CliDriver.java:513)
        at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke0(Native Method)
        at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(NativeMethodAccessorImpl.java:39)
        at sun.reflect.DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.java:25)
        at java.lang.reflect.Method.invoke(Method.java:597)
        at org.apache.hadoop.util.RunJar.main(RunJar.java:186)
Caused by: org.apache.thrift.TApplicationException: get_privilege_set failed: unknown result
        at org.apache.hadoop.hive.metastore.api.ThriftHiveMetastore$Client.recv_get_privilege_set(ThriftHiveMetastore.java:2414)
        at org.apache.hadoop.hive.metastore.api.ThriftHiveMetastore$Client.get_privilege_set(ThriftHiveMetastore.java:2379)
        at org.apache.hadoop.hive.metastore.HiveMetaStoreClient.get_privilege_set(HiveMetaStoreClient.java:1042)
        at org.apache.hadoop.hive.ql.metadata.Hive.get_privilege_set(Hive.java:1615)
        ... 15 more

The problem of our configuration is "We should use LOCAL metastore even the MySQL metastore locates on a different server", in other word, hive.metastore.local=true. If you want to use "Remote" metastore, you need to start the metastore service hive --service metastore. It seems working when we use "serverA:8003", because we install Hue on serverA, and beeswax starts a metastore thrift service on port 8003. That is why you can run show tables successfully, but get the above error when you run select.

Another issue is: when you use remote metastore, you will still have this issue. see https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/HIVE-2554 and https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/HIVE-2405.