Apache HBase Master (HMaster) fails to start in Azure HDInsight
This article describes troubleshooting steps and possible resolutions for issues when interacting with Azure HDInsight clusters.
Scenario: Master startup cannot progress, in holding-pattern until region comes online
Issue
HMaster fails to start due to the following warning:
hbase:namespace,,<timestamp_region_create>.<encoded_region_name>.is NOT online; state={<encoded_region_name> state=OPEN, ts=<some_timestamp>, server=<server_name>}; ServerCrashProcedures=true. Master startup cannot progress, in holding-pattern until region onlined.
For example, the parameter values may vary in the actual message:
hbase:namespace,,1546588612000.0000010bc582e331e3080d5913a97000. is NOT online; state={0000010bc582e331e3080d5913a97000 state=OPEN, ts=1633935993000, server=<wn fqdn>,16000,1622012792000}; ServerCrashProcedures=false. Master startup cannot progress, in holding-pattern until region onlined.
Cause
HMaster checks the WAL directory on the region servers before bringing back the OPEN regions online. In this case, if that directory wasn't present, it was not getting started
Resolution
Create this dummy directory using the command:
sudo -u hbase hdfs dfs -mkdir /hbase-wals/WALs/<wn fqdn>,16000,1622012792000
Restart the HMaster service from the Ambari UI.
If you're using hbase-2.x, see more information in how to use hbck2 to assign namespace and meta table
Scenario: Atomic renaming failure
Issue
Unexpected files identified during startup process.
Cause
During the startup process, HMaster performs many initialization steps, including moving data from scratch (.tmp) folder to data folder. HMaster also looks at the write-ahead logs (WAL) folder to see if there are any unresponsive region servers.
HMaster does a basic list command on the WAL folders. If at any time, HMaster sees an unexpected file in any of these folders, it throws an exception and doesn't start.
Resolution
Check the call stack and try to determine which folder might be causing the problem (for instance, it might be the WAL folder or the .tmp folder). Then, in Azure Storage Explorer or by using HDFS commands, try to locate the problem file. Usually, this file is called *-renamePending.json
. (The *-renamePending.json
file is a journal file that's used to implement the atomic rename operation in the WASB driver. Due to bugs in this implementation, these files can be left over after process crashes, and so on.) Force-delete this file either in Cloud Explorer or by using HDFS commands.
Sometimes, there might also be a temporary file named something like $$$.$$$
at this location. You have to use HDFS ls
command to see this file; you can't see the file in Azure Storage Explorer. To delete this file, use the HDFS command hdfs dfs -rm /\<path>\/\$\$\$.\$\$\$
.
After you've run these commands, HMaster should start immediately.
Scenario: No server address listed
Issue
You might see a message that indicates that the hbase: meta
table isn't online. Running hbck
might report that hbase: meta table replicaId 0 is not found on any region.
In the HMaster logs, you might see the message: No server address listed in hbase: meta for region hbase: backup <region name>
.
Cause
HMaster couldn't initialize after restarting HBase.
Resolution
In the HBase shell, enter the following commands (change actual values as applicable):
scan 'hbase:meta' delete 'hbase:meta','hbase:backup <region name>','<column name>'
Delete the
hbase: namespace
entry. This entry might be the same error that's being reported when thehbase: namespace
table is scanned.Restart the active HMaster from Ambari UI to bring up HBase in running state.
In the HBase shell, to bring up all offline tables, run the following command:
hbase hbck -ignorePreCheckPermission -fixAssignments
Scenario: java.io.IOException: Timedout
Issue
HMaster times out with fatal exception similar to: java.io.IOException: Timedout 300000ms waiting for namespace table to be assigned
.
Cause
You might experience this issue if you have many tables and regions that haven't been flushed when you restart your HMaster services. The time-out is a known defect with HMaster. General cluster startup tasks can take a long time. HMaster shuts down if the namespace table isn’t yet assigned. The lengthy startup tasks happen where large amount of unflushed data exists and a timeout of five minutes isn't sufficient.
Resolution
From the Apache Ambari UI, go to HBase > Configs. In the custom
hbase-site.xml
file, add the following setting:Key: hbase.master.namespace.init.timeout Value: 2400000
Restart the required services (HMaster, and possibly other HBase services).
Scenario: Frequent region server restarts
Issue
Nodes reboot periodically. From the region server logs you may see entries similar to:
2017-05-09 17:45:07,683 WARN [JvmPauseMonitor] util.JvmPauseMonitor: Detected pause in JVM or host machine (eg GC): pause of approximately 31000ms
2017-05-09 17:45:07,683 WARN [JvmPauseMonitor] util.JvmPauseMonitor: Detected pause in JVM or host machine (eg GC): pause of approximately 31000ms
2017-05-09 17:45:07,683 WARN [JvmPauseMonitor] util.JvmPauseMonitor: Detected pause in JVM or host machine (eg GC): pause of approximately 31000ms
Cause: zookeeper session timeout
Long regionserver
JVM GC pause. The pause causes regionserver
to be unresponsive and not able to send heart beat to HMaster within the zookeeper session timeout 40s. HMaster believes regionserver
is dead, aborts the regionserver
and restarts.
To mitigate, change the Zookeeper session timeout, not only hbase-site
setting zookeeper.session.timeout
but also Zookeeper zoo.cfg
setting maxSessionTimeout
need to be changed.
Access Ambari UI, go to HBase -> Configs -> Settings, in Timeouts section, change the value of Zookeeper Session Timeout.
Access Ambari UI, go to Zookeeper -> Configs -> Custom
zoo.cfg
, add/change the following setting. Make sure the value is the same as HBasezookeeper.session.timeout
.Key: maxSessionTimeout Value: 120000
Restart required services.
Cause: overloaded RegionServer
Follow Number of regions per RS - upper bound to calculate upper bound.
For example: 8000 (Region server Heap -- Xmx in MB) * 0.4 (hbase.regionserver.global.memstore.size) /64 (hbase.regionserver.hlog.blocksize/2) = 50
To mitigate, scale up your HBase cluster.
Scenario: Log splitting failure
Issue
HMasters failed to come up on a HBase cluster.
Cause
Misconfigured HDFS and HBase settings for a secondary storage account.
Resolution
set hbase.rootdir: wasb://@.blob.core.windows.net/hbase
and restart services on Ambari.
Next steps
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