Can't execute HBase commands

Hello,

When I try to execute a command in the HBase Shell, I get the following error: ERROR: org.apache.hadoop.hbase.PleaseHoldException: org.apache.hadoop.hbase.PleaseHoldException: Master is initializing despite I started HBase using ./bin/start-hbase.sh.

Do you know where this error comes from and how I can fix it?

Thanks.

Hi Nathan,

Are you running a single stand-alone node, or trying to boot up a cluster? What version of HBase are you using?

—Jim

Hello,

I’m using the one provided by Apache on their website.
I’ve downloaded and unpacked it as described on the website: http://hbase.apache.org/book.html#d1952e77

Thanks.

Hi Nathan,

I looked around on the web and dug through the source code a bit. There’s not a single obvious answer from what I can tell.

Something is stopping your HMaster from getting to the line this.initialized = true. It could be a number of things, like inability to connect to Zookeeper, etc from what I can tell.

Maybe there’s something more telling in the logs? If you paste more of them maybe something will jump out?

Thanks in advance,

—Jim

Nathan, I am guessing you don’t need this information anymore. But I hope this helps someone else.

I checked my hbase log files and noticed that hbase wasn’t able to connect to the localhost on the IP 127.0.0.1. This was what was causing the problem.

I have had this problem occur when using Ubuntu. In the /etc/hosts file in Ubuntu, the IP 127.0.1.1 is mapped to the localhost and the machine name.

However, Hbase expects the IP 127.0.0.1 to be mapped to the localhost and the machine name.

On my computer, I had the following lines in /etc/hosts

127.0.0.1 localhost
127.0.1.1 localhost
127.0.1.1 prem-machine

I modified this file to look like this:

127.0.0.1 localhost
127.0.0.1 prem-machine
127.0.1.1 localhost
127.0.1.1 prem-machine

I restarted hbase after this change and the problem was solved.