Name node is in safe mode. Not able to leave

Question

In order to forcefully let the namenode leave safemode, following command should be executed:

 bin/hadoop dfsadmin -safemode leave

You are getting Unknown command error for your command as -safemode isn't a sub-command for hadoop fs, but it is of hadoop dfsadmin.

Also after the above command, I would suggest you to once run hadoop fsck so that any inconsistencies crept in the hdfs might be sorted out.

Update:

Use hdfs command instead of hadoop command for newer distributions. The hadoop command is being deprecated:

hdfs dfsadmin -safemode leave

hadoop dfsadmin has been deprecated and so is hadoop fs command, all hdfs related tasks are being moved to a separate command hdfs.

try this, it will work

sudo -u hdfs hdfs dfsadmin -safemode leave

The Command did not work for me but the following did

hdfs dfsadmin -safemode leave

I used the hdfs command instead of the hadoop command.

Check out http://ask.gopivotal.com/hc/en-us/articles/200933026-HDFS-goes-into-readonly-mode-and-errors-out-with-Name-node-is-in-safe-mode- link too

safe mode on means (HDFS is in READ only mode)
safe mode off means (HDFS is in Writeable and readable mode)

In Hadoop 2.6.0, we can check the status of name node with help of the below commands:

TO CHECK THE name node status

$ hdfs dfsadmin -safemode get

TO ENTER IN SAFE MODE:

$ hdfs dfsadmin -safemode enter

TO LEAVE SAFE mode

~$ hdfs dfsadmin -safemode leave

If you use Hadoop version 2.6.1 above, while the command works, it complains that its depreciated. I actually could not use the hadoop dfsadmin -safemode leave because I was running Hadoop in a Docker container and that command magically fails when run in the container, so what I did was this. I checked doc and found dfs.safemode.threshold.pct in documentation that says

Specifies the percentage of blocks that should satisfy the minimal replication requirement defined by dfs.replication.min. Values less than or equal to 0 mean not to wait for any particular percentage of blocks before exiting safemode. Values greater than 1 will make safe mode permanent.

so I changed the hdfs-site.xml into the following (In older Hadoop versions, apparently you need to do it in hdfs-default.xml:

<configuration>
    <property>
        <name>dfs.safemode.threshold.pct</name>
        <value>0</value>
    </property>
</configuration>

Try this

sudo -u hdfs hdfs dfsadmin -safemode leave

check status of safemode

sudo -u hdfs hdfs dfsadmin -safemode get

If it is still in safemode ,then one of the reason would be not enough space in your node, you can check your node disk usage using :

df -h

if root partition is full, delete files or add space in your root partition and retry first step.