Troubleshooting PXF

PXF Errors

The following table lists some common errors encountered while using PXF:

Table 1. PXF Errors and Explanation
ErrorCommon Explanation
ERROR:  invalid URI pxf://localhost:51200/demo/file1: missing options sectionLOCATION does not include options after the file name: <path>?<key>=<value>&<key>=<value>…
ERROR:  protocol “pxf” does not existHAWQ is not compiled with PXF protocol. It requires the GPSQL version of HAWQ
ERROR:  remote component error (0) from ’<x>’: There is no pxf servlet listening on the host and port specified in the external table url.Wrong server or port, or the service is not started
ERROR:  Missing FRAGMENTER option in the pxf uri: pxf://localhost:51200/demo/file1?a=aNo FRAGMENTER option was specified in LOCATION.
ERROR:  remote component error (500) from ’<x>’:   type  Exception report   message   org.apache.hadoop.mapred.InvalidInputException:

Input path does not exist: hdfs://0.0.0.0:8020/demo/file1  

File or pattern given in LOCATION doesn’t exist on specified path.
ERROR: remote component error (500) from ’<x>’:   type  Exception report   message   org.apache.hadoop.mapred.InvalidInputException : Input Pattern hdfs://0.0.0.0:8020/demo/file matches 0 files File or pattern given in LOCATION doesn’t exist on specified path.
ERROR:  remote component error (500) from ’<x>’: PXF not correctly installed in CLASSPATHCannot find PXF Jar
ERROR:  PXF API encountered a HTTP 404 error. Either the PXF service (tomcat) on the DataNode was not started or the PXF webapp was not started.Either the required DataNode does not exist or PXF service (tcServer) on the DataNode is not started or PXF webapp was not started
ERROR:  remote component error (500) from ’<x>’:  type  Exception report   message   java.lang.NoClassDefFoundError: org/apache/hadoop/hbase/client/HTableInterfaceOne of the classes required for running PXF or one of its plug-ins is missing. Check that all resources in the PXF classpath files exist on the cluster nodes
ERROR: remote component error (500) from ’<x>’:   type  Exception report   message   java.io.IOException: Can’t get Master Kerberos principal for use as renewerSecure PXF: YARN isn’t properly configured for secure (Kerberized) HDFS installs
ERROR: fail to get filesystem credential for uri hdfs://<namenode>:8020/Secure PXF: Wrong HDFS host or port is not 8020
ERROR: remote component error (413) from ’<x>’: HTTP status code is 413 but HTTP response string is emptyThe PXF table number of attributes and their name sizes are too large for tcServer to accommodate in its request buffer. The solution is to increase the value of the maxHeaderCount and maxHttpHeaderSize parameters on server.xml on tcServer instance on all nodes and then restart PXF:

<Connector acceptCount=“100” connectionTimeout=“20000” executor=“tomcatThreadPool” maxKeepAliveRequests=“15”maxHeaderCount=”<some larger value>“maxHttpHeaderSize=”<some larger value in bytes>“ port=”${bio.http.port}“ protocol=”org.apache.coyote.http11.Http11Protocol” redirectPort=“${bio.https.port}”/>

ERROR: remote component error (500) from ’<x>’: type Exception report message java.lang.Exception: Class com.pivotal.pxf.<plugin name> does not appear in classpath. Plugins provided by PXF must start with “org.apache.hawq.pxf”Querying a PXF table that still uses the old package name (“com.pivotal.pxf.”) results in an error message that recommends moving to the new package name (“org.apache.hawq.pxf”).
HBase Specific Errors 
ERROR:  remote component error (500) from ’<x>’:   type  Exception report   message    org.apache.hadoop.hbase.client.NoServerForRegionException: Unable to find region for t1,,99999999999999 after 10 tries.HBase service is down, probably HRegionServer
ERROR:  remote component error (500) from ’<x>’:  type  Exception report   message   org.apache.hadoop.hbase.TableNotFoundException: nosuchHBase cannot find the requested table
ERROR:  remote component error (500) from ’<x>’:  type  Exception report   message   java.lang.NoClassDefFoundError: org/apache/hadoop/hbase/client/HTableInterfacePXF cannot find a required JAR file, probably HBase’s
ERROR:  remote component error (500) from ’<x>’:   type  Exception report   message   java.lang.NoClassDefFoundError: org/apache/zookeeper/KeeperExceptionPXF cannot find ZooKeeper’s JAR
ERROR:  remote component error (500) from ’<x>’:  type  Exception report   message   java.lang.Exception: java.lang.IllegalArgumentException: Illegal HBase column name a, missing :PXF table has an illegal field name. Each field name must correspond to an HBase column in the syntax <column family>:<field name>
ERROR: remote component error (500) from ’<x>’: type Exception report message org.apache.hadoop.hbase.regionserver.NoSuchColumnFamilyException: Column family a does not exist in region t1,,1405517248353.85f4977bfa88f4d54211cb8ac0f4e644. in table ‘t1’, {NAME =&gt; ‘cf’, DATA_BLOCK_ENCODING =&gt; ‘NONE’, BLOOMFILTER =&gt; ‘ROW’, REPLICATION_SCOPE =&gt; ‘0’, COMPRESSION =&gt; ‘NONE’, VERSIONS =&gt; ‘1’, TTL =&gt; ‘2147483647’, MIN_VERSIONS =&gt; ‘0’, KEEP_DELETED_CELLS =&gt; ‘false’, BLOCKSIZE =&gt; ‘65536’, ENCODE_ON_DISK =&gt; ‘true’, IN_MEMORY =&gt; ‘false’, BLOCKCACHE =&gt; ‘true’}Required HBase table does not contain the requested column
Hive-Specific Errors 
ERROR:  remote component error (500) from ’<x>’:  type  Exception report   message   java.lang.RuntimeException: Failed to connect to Hive metastore: java.net.ConnectException: Connection refusedHive Metastore service is down
ERROR:  remote component error (500) from ’<x>’: type  Exception report   message

NoSuchObjectException(message:default.players table not found)

Table doesn’t exist in Hive
JSON-Specific Errors 
ERROR: No fields in record (seg0 slice1 host:<n> pid=<n>)

DETAIL: External table <tablename>

Check your JSON file for empty lines; remove them and try again
ERROR: remote component error (500) from host:51200: type Exception report message <text>[0] is not an array node description The server encountered an internal error that prevented it from fulfilling this request. exception java.io.IOException: <text>[0] is not an array node (libchurl.c:878) (seg4 host:40000 pid=<n>)

DETAIL: External table <tablename>

JSON field assumed to be an array, but it is a scalar field.

PXF Logging

Enabling more verbose logging may aid PXF troubleshooting efforts.

PXF provides two categories of message logging - service-level and database-level.

Service-Level Logging

PXF utilizes log4j for service-level logging. PXF-service-related log messages are captured in a log file specified by PXF’s log4j properties file, /etc/pxf/conf/pxf-log4j.properties. The default PXF logging configuration will write INFO and more severe level logs to /var/log/pxf/pxf-service.log.

PXF provides more detailed logging when the DEBUG level is enabled. To configure PXF DEBUG logging, uncomment the following line in pxf-log4j.properties:

  1. #log4j.logger.org.apache.hawq.pxf=DEBUG

and restart the PXF service:

  1. $ sudo service pxf-service restart

With DEBUG level logging now enabled, perform your PXF operations; for example, creating and querying an external table. (Make note of the time; this will direct you to the relevant log messages in /var/log/pxf/pxf-service.log.)

  1. $ psql
  1. gpadmin=# CREATE EXTERNAL TABLE hivetest(id int, newid int)
  2. LOCATION ('pxf://namenode:51200/pxf_hive1?PROFILE=Hive')
  3. FORMAT 'CUSTOM' (formatter='pxfwritable_import');
  4. gpadmin=# select * from hivetest;
  5. <select output>

Examine/collect the log messages from pxf-service.log.

Note: DEBUG logging is verbose and has a performance impact. Remember to turn off PXF service DEBUG logging after you have collected the desired information.

Database-Level Logging

Database-level logging may provide insight into internal PXF service operations. Additionally, when you access Hive tables using hcatalog or the Hive* profiles, log messages identify the underlying Hive* profile(s) employed to access the data.

Enable HAWQ and PXF debug message logging during operations on PXF external tables by setting the client_min_messages server configuration parameter to DEBUG2 in your psql session.

  1. $ psql
  1. gpadmin=# SET client_min_messages=DEBUG2
  2. gpadmin=# SELECT * FROM hivetest;
  3. ...
  4. DEBUG2: churl http header: cell #19: X-GP-URL-HOST: localhost
  5. DEBUG2: churl http header: cell #20: X-GP-URL-PORT: 51200
  6. DEBUG2: churl http header: cell #21: X-GP-DATA-DIR: pxf_hive1
  7. DEBUG2: churl http header: cell #22: X-GP-profile: Hive
  8. DEBUG2: churl http header: cell #23: X-GP-URI: pxf://namenode:51200/pxf_hive1?profile=Hive
  9. ...
  10. DEBUG2: pxf: set_current_fragment_headers: using profile: Hive
  11. ...

Examine/collect the log messages from stdout.

Note: DEBUG2 database session logging has a performance impact. Remember to turn off DEBUG2 logging after you have collected the desired information.

  1. gpadmin=# SET client_min_messages=NOTICE

Addressing PXF Memory Issues

The Java heap size can be a limiting factor in PXF’s ability to serve many concurrent requests or to run queries against large tables.

You may run into situations where a query will hang or fail with an Out of Memory exception (OOM). This typically occurs when many threads are reading different data fragments from an external table and insufficient heap space exists to open all fragments at the same time. To avert or remedy this situation, Pivotal recommends first increasing the Java maximum heap size or decreasing the Tomcat maximum number of threads, depending upon what works best for your system configuration.

Note: The configuration changes described in this topic require modifying config files on each PXF node in your HAWQ cluster. After performing the updates, be sure to verify that the configuration on all PXF nodes is the same.

You will need to re-apply these configuration changes after any PXF version upgrades.

Increasing the Maximum Heap Size

Each PXF node is configured with a default Java heap size of 512MB. If the nodes in your cluster have an ample amount of memory, increasing the amount allocated to the PXF agents is the best approach. Pivotal recommends a heap size value between 1-2GB.

Perform the following steps to increase the PXF agent heap size in your HAWQ deployment. You must perform the configuration changes on each PXF node in your HAWQ cluster.

  1. Open /var/pxf/pxf-service/bin/setenv.sh in a text editor.

    1. root@pxf-node$ vi /var/pxf/pxf-service/bin/setenv.sh
  2. Update the -Xmx option to the desired value in the JVM_OPTS setting:

    1. JVM_OPTS="-Xmx1024M -Xss256K"
  3. Restart PXF:

    1. If you use Ambari to manage your cluster, restart the PXF service via the Ambari console.
    2. If you do not use Ambari, restart the PXF service from the command line on each node:

      1. root@pxf-node$ service pxf-service restart

Decreasing the Maximum Number of Threads

If increasing the maximum heap size is not suitable for your HAWQ cluster, try decreasing the number of concurrent working threads configured for the underlying Tomcat web application. A decrease in the number of running threads will prevent any PXF node from exhausting its memory, while ensuring that current queries run to completion (albeit a bit slower). As Tomcat’s default behavior is to queue requests until a thread is free, decreasing this value will not result in denied requests.

The Tomcat default maximum number of threads is 300. Pivotal recommends decreasing the maximum number of threads to under 6. (If you plan to run large workloads on a large number of files using a Hive profile, Pivotal recommends you pick an even lower value.)

Perform the following steps to decrease the maximum number of Tomcat threads in your HAWQ PXF deployment. You must perform the configuration changes on each PXF node in your HAWQ cluster.

  1. Open the /var/pxf/pxf-service/conf/server.xml file in a text editor.

    1. root@pxf-node$ vi /var/pxf/pxf-service/conf/server.xml
  2. Update the Catalina Executor block to identify the desired maxThreads value:

    1. <Executor maxThreads="2"
    2. minSpareThreads="50"
    3. name="tomcatThreadPool"
    4. namePrefix="tomcat-http--"/>
  3. Restart PXF:

    1. If you use Ambari to manage your cluster, restart the PXF service via the Ambari console.
    2. If you do not use Ambari, restart the PXF service from the command line on each node:

      1. root@pxf-node$ service pxf-service restart