Why does pyspark fail with "Unable to locate hive jars to connect to metastore. Please set spark.sql.hive.metastore.jars."?

Question

I am using a standalone cluster of apache spark version 2.0.0 with two nodes and i have not installed hive.I am getting the following error on creating a dataframe.

from pyspark import SparkContext
from pyspark import SQLContext
sqlContext = SQLContext(sc)
l = [('Alice', 1)]
sqlContext.createDataFrame(l).collect()
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
IllegalArgumentException                  Traceback (most recent call last)
<ipython-input-9-63bc4f21f23e> in <module>()
----> 1 sqlContext.createDataFrame(l).collect()

/home/mok/spark-2.0.0-bin-hadoop2.7/python/pyspark/sql/context.pyc in createDataFrame(self, data, schema, samplingRatio)
    297         Py4JJavaError: ...
    298         """
--> 299         return self.sparkSession.createDataFrame(data, schema, samplingRatio)
    300 
    301     @since(1.3)

/home/mok/spark-2.0.0-bin-hadoop2.7/python/pyspark/sql/session.pyc in createDataFrame(self, data, schema, samplingRatio)
    522             rdd, schema = self._createFromLocal(map(prepare, data), schema)
    523         jrdd = self._jvm.SerDeUtil.toJavaArray(rdd._to_java_object_rdd())
--> 524         jdf = self._jsparkSession.applySchemaToPythonRDD(jrdd.rdd(), schema.json())
    525         df = DataFrame(jdf, self._wrapped)
    526         df._schema = schema

/home/mok/spark-2.0.0-bin-hadoop2.7/python/lib/py4j-0.10.1-src.zip/py4j/java_gateway.py in __call__(self, *args)
    931         answer = self.gateway_client.send_command(command)
    932         return_value = get_return_value(
--> 933             answer, self.gateway_client, self.target_id, self.name)
    934 
    935         for temp_arg in temp_args:

/home/mok/spark-2.0.0-bin-hadoop2.7/python/pyspark/sql/utils.pyc in deco(*a, **kw)
     77                 raise QueryExecutionException(s.split(': ', 1)[1], stackTrace)
     78             if s.startswith('java.lang.IllegalArgumentException: '):
---> 79                 raise IllegalArgumentException(s.split(': ', 1)[1], stackTrace)
     80             raise
     81     return deco

IllegalArgumentException: u'Unable to locate hive jars to connect to metastore. Please set spark.sql.hive.metastore.jars.'

So should i install Hive or edit the configurations.

Answer 1

If you have several java versions you'll have to figure out which spark is using (I did this using trial and error , starting with

JAVA_HOME="/usr/lib/jvm/java-11-openjdk-amd64"

and ending with

JAVA_HOME="/usr/lib/jvm/java-8-openjdk-amd64"

Answer 2

IllegalArgumentException: u'Unable to locate hive jars to connect to metastore. Please set spark.sql.hive.metastore.jars.'

I had the same issue and fixed it by using Java 8. Make sure you install JDK 8 and set the environment variables accordingly.

Do not use Java 11 with Spark / pyspark 2.4.