Installing Hadoop on Windows/Linux/macOS in 5 Minutes

Need to install Hadoop for a class or a project? It can be hard. It took me 1 hour to install and that was after clear instructions provided by Professor.

So I did what a good Software Engineer does and automated it.

Comic credit: Automation by xkcd.

In this post, I will cover two ways to install Hadoop:

1. Automatic install in 5 minutes
2. Manual install in 15ish minutes

Unless you are a Software Engineer who wants to install it manually, I’d recommend going with Vagrant as it’s faster and you don’t have to fiddle with you OS.

Vagrant also has an added benefit of keeping your local OS clean and not having to install and troubleshoot different versions of jdk and other packages.

Installing Hadoop in 5 Minutes with Vagrant

1. Make sure you have latest versions of VirtualBox and Vagrant installed.
2. Download or clone Vagrant Hadoop repository.
3. Navigate to the directory where you downloaded the repo using command line (want to learn command line? I’ve got you covered: 7 Essential Linux Commands You Need To Know)
4. Run vagrant up
5. Done

That’s it. Once installation is done, run vagrant ssh to access your vagrant machine and use Hadoop.

Installing Hadoop Manually on macOS and Linux

Warning: I’ve only tested these instructions on Linux (Ubuntu to be specific). On macOS, you may need to use different folders or install additional software.

Here are the instructions:

1. Make sure that apt-get knows about latest repos using sudo apt-get update
2. Install Java
   sudo apt-get install openjdk-11-jdk
3. Download Hadoop
   wget http://mirrors.koehn.com/apache/hadoop/common/hadoop-3.2.0/hadoop-3.2.0.tar.gz
4. Copy Hadoop files to /usr/local/bin (this is a personal preference, you can copy to any folder, just make sure you change the commands going forward)
   sudo tar -xvzf hadoop-3.2.0.tar.gz -C /usr/local/bin/
5. Rename the hadoop folder. Again, this is a personal preference, you can leave it the way you want but you’ll need to change the paths going forward.
   sudo mv /usr/local/bin/hadoop-3.2.0 /usr/local/bin/hadoop/
6. Update path variables:
   

   	echo "export JAVA_HOME=/usr" >> /home/vagrant/.bashrc
   	echo "export HADOOP_LOG_DIR=/hadoop_logs" >> /home/vagrant/.bashrc
   	echo "export PATH=\$PATH:/usr/local/bin/hadoop/bin:/usr/local/bin/hadoop/sbin" >> /home/vagrant/.bashrc
   	source ~/.bashrc

   view raw hadoop_exports.sh hosted with ❤ by GitHub
7. Update Hadoop environment variables:
   

   	echo "export JAVA_HOME=/usr" | sudo tee --append /usr/local/bin/hadoop/etc/hadoop/hadoop-env.sh
   	echo "export HADOOP_LOG_DIR=/hadoop_logs" | sudo tee --append /usr/local/bin/hadoop/etc/hadoop/hadoop-env.sh
   	echo "export HDFS_NAMENODE_USER=\"vagrant\"" | sudo tee --append /usr/local/bin/hadoop/etc/hadoop/hadoop-env.sh
   	echo "export HDFS_DATANODE_USER=\"vagrant\"" | sudo tee --append /usr/local/bin/hadoop/etc/hadoop/hadoop-env.sh
   	echo "export HDFS_SECONDARYNAMENODE_USER=\"vagrant\"" | sudo tee --append /usr/local/bin/hadoop/etc/hadoop/hadoop-env.sh
   	echo "export YARN_RESOURCEMANAGER_USER=\"vagrant\"" | sudo tee --append /usr/local/bin/hadoop/etc/hadoop/hadoop-env.sh
   	echo "export YARN_NODEMANAGER_USER=\"vagrant\"" | sudo tee --append /usr/local/bin/hadoop/etc/hadoop/hadoop-env.sh

   view raw hadoop_env.sh hosted with ❤ by GitHub
8. Generate a SSH key and add it to authorized_keys (thanks to Stack Overflow user sapy: Hadoop “Permission denied” warning)
   

   	ssh-keygen -t rsa -P '' -f ~/.ssh/id_rsa
   	cat /home/vagrant/.ssh/id_rsa.pub >> ~/.ssh/authorized_keys

   view raw ssh_gen.sh hosted with ❤ by GitHub
9. You’ll need to edit the /usr/local/bin/hadoop/etc/hadoop/core-site.xml file to add fs.defaultFS setting. Here’s my configuration file:

   	<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
   	<?xml-stylesheet type="text/xsl" href="configuration.xsl"?>
   	<!--
   	Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the "License");
   	you may not use this file except in compliance with the License.
   	You may obtain a copy of the License at
   	http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0
   	Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software
   	distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS,
   	WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied.
   	See the License for the specific language governing permissions and
   	limitations under the License. See accompanying LICENSE file.
   	-->
   	<!-- Put site-specific property overrides in this file. -->
   	<configuration>
   	<property>
   	<name>fs.defaultFS</name>
   	<value>hdfs://localhost:9000</value>
   	</property>
   	</configuration>

   view raw core-site.xml hosted with ❤ by GitHub
10. Next, edit the /usr/local/bin/hadoop/etc/hadoop/hdfs-site.xml file to add 3 properties. As SachinJ noted on Stack Overlow, hdfs will reset every time you reboot your OS without the first two of these. (Hadoop namenode needs to be formatted after every computer start)

    	<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
    	<?xml-stylesheet type="text/xsl" href="configuration.xsl"?>
    	<!--
    	Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the "License");
    	you may not use this file except in compliance with the License.
    	You may obtain a copy of the License at
    	http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0
    	Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software
    	distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS,
    	WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied.
    	See the License for the specific language governing permissions and
    	limitations under the License. See accompanying LICENSE file.
    	-->
    	<!-- Put site-specific property overrides in this file. -->
    	<configuration>
    	<property>
    	<name>dfs.name.dir</name>
    	<value>file:///vagrant_data/hadoop/name</value>
    	</property>
    	<property>
    	<name>dfs.data.dir</name>
    	<value>file:///vagrant_data/hadoop/data</value>
    	</property>
    	<property>
    	<name>dfs.replication</name>
    	<value>1</value>
    	</property>
    	</configuration>

    view raw hdfs-site.xml hosted with ❤ by GitHub
11. Initialize the hdfs
    /usr/local/bin/hadoop/bin/hdfs namenode -format
12. Run dfs using /usr/local/bin/hadoop/sbin/start-dfs.sh
13. Test everything is running fine by creating a directory in hdfs using hdfs dfs -mkdir /test

That’s it. If you got Hadoop working, do share the post to help others.

Faced any issues? Tell me in comments and I’ll see how I can help.