How to include hbase-site.xml in the classpath

Question

I am currently trying to get my HBase code to use the settings specified in my hbase-site.xml. It seems to use default settings instead of what is specified in the hbase-site.xml config file. I have restarted the HBase cluster since updating the files, but it is still not using config files that I updated.

The cluster I am using is 2 nodes, one of which is the master. The config files on both of the nodes specify the IP of the master node as the zookeeper quorum. I believe the problem is that my settings specified in hbase-site.xml are not being used because the code runs fine if I set the zookeeper quorum to the same value as in my hbase-site.xml via code, but the second node cannot contact the master if the quorum is not specified via code.

config = HBaseConfiguration.create();
config.set("hbase.zookeeper.quorum", masterNodeIP);

I would greatly appreciate instructions or a link on how to include hbase-site.xml into my code's classpath. I develop with Eclipse on a Windows machine and have the HBase environment installed on a Linux cluster. I usually use Eclipse to compile the code, due to dependencies.

Ideally, I want each node in the cluster to use its own config file.

Thanks in advance!

Answer 1

If it's using the default regardless of what you put in your hbase-site.xml, it probably means it is being overriden by another file in your classpath. This is very possible because there is already a conf-site.xml in the hbase jar.

To fix this, edit your classpath to add the directory containing your hbase-site.xml at the end of the classpath to be sure nothing overrides it. Something like:

java -cp $CLASSPATH:/usr/lib/hbase/conf path.to.your.Mainclass

If it gets too obscure, I would advise running this from command line and not in Eclipse so you can be exactly sure of what you have in your classpath.

Hope that helps.