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Doc > Hue Administration Guide

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This guide describes how to install and configure a Hue tarball or packages. # Installation The following instructions describe how to install the Hue tarball on a multi-node cluster. You need to also install Hadoop and its satellite components (Oozie, Hive...) and update some Hadoop configuration files before running Hue. Hue consists of a web service that runs on a special node in your cluster. Choose one node where you want to run Hue. This guide refers to that node as the _Hue Server_. For optimal performance, this should be one of the nodes within your cluster, though it can be a remote node as long as there are no overly restrictive firewalls. For small clusters of less than 10 nodes, you can use your existing master node as the Hue Server. You can download the Hue tarball here: [https://github.com/cloudera/hue/releases](https://github.com/cloudera/hue/releases) ## Hue Dependencies Hue employs some Python modules which use native code and requires certain development libraries be installed on your system. To install from the tarball, you must have the following installed: Required Dependencies The full list is here: [https://github.com/cloudera/hue#development-prerequisites](https://github.com/cloudera/hue#development-prerequisites) ## Build Configure `$PREFIX` with the path where you want to install Hue by running: PREFIX=/usr/share make install cd /usr/share/hue You can install Hue anywhere on your system, and run Hue as a non-root user. It is a good practice to create a new user for Hue and either install Hue in that user's home directory, or in a directory within `/usr/share`. ## Docker Alternatively to building Hue, a (Hue Docker image)[http://gethue.com/getting-started-with-hue-in-2-minutes-with-docker/] is available. ## Troubleshooting the Hue Tarball Installation .Q: I moved my Hue installation from one directory to another and now Hue no longer functions correctly. A: Due to the use of absolute paths by some Python packages, you must run a series of commands if you move your Hue installation. In the new location, run: rm app.reg rm -r build make apps .Q: Why does "make install" compile other pieces of software? A: In order to ensure that Hue is stable on a variety of distributions and architectures, it installs a Python virtual environment which includes its dependencies. This ensures that the software can depend on specific versions of various Python libraries and you don't have to be concerned about missing software components. ## Starting Hue from the Tarball After your cluster is running with the plugins enabled, you can start Hue on your Hue Server by running: build/env/bin/supervisor This will start several subprocesses, corresponding to the different Hue components. Your Hue installation is now running. # Configuration ## Reference Architecture * 3 Hues and 1 Load Balancer * Databases: MySQL InnoDB, PostgreSQL, Oracle * LDAP * Monitoring * Impala HA * HiveServer2 HA * Downloads [Read more about it here](http://gethue.com/performance-tuning/). ### Load Balancers Hue is often run with: * Cherrypy with Httpd * [Apache mod Python](http://gethue.com/how-to-run-hue-with-the-apache-server/) * [NGINX](Using NGINX to speed up Hue) ### Proxy A Web proxy lets you centralize all the access to a certain URL and prettify the address (e.g. ec2-54-247-321-151.compute-1.amazonaws.com --> demo.gethue.com). [Here is one way to do it](http://gethue.com/i-put-a-proxy-on-hue/). ## Quick Start Wizard The Quick Start wizard allows you to perform the following Hue setup operations by clicking the tab of each step or sequentially by clicking Next in each screen: 1. **Check Configuration** validates your Hue configuration. It will note any potential misconfiguration and provide hints as to how to fix them. You can edit the configuration file described in the next section or use Cloudera Manager, if installed, to manage your changes. 2. **Examples** contains links to install examples into the Hive, Impala, MapReduce, Spark, Oozie, Solr Dashboard and Pig Editor applications. 3. **Users** contains a link to the User Admin application to create or import users and a checkbox to enable and disable collection of usage information. 4. **Go!** - displays the Hue home screen, which contains links to the different categories of applications supported by Hue: Query, Hadoop, and Workflow. ## Configuration Displays a list of the installed Hue applications and their configuration. The location of the folder containing the Hue configuration files is shown at the top of the page. Hue configuration settings are in the hue.ini configuration file. Click the tabs under **Configuration Sections and Variables** to see the settings configured for each application. For information on configuring these settings, see Hue Configuration in the Hue installation manual. Hue ships with a default configuration that will work for pseudo-distributed clusters. If you are running on a real cluster, you must make a few changes to the `hue.ini` configuration file (`/etc/hue/hue.ini` when installed from the package version) or `pseudo-distributed.ini` in `desktop/conf` when in development mode). The following sections describe the key configuration options you must make to configure Hue.
To list all available configuration options, run: $ /usr/share/hue/build/env/bin/hue config_help | less This commands outlines the various sections and options in the configuration, and provides help and information on the default values.
To view the current configuration from within Hue, open: http:///hue/dump_config
Hue loads and merges all of the files with extension `.ini` located in the `/etc/hue` directory. Files that are alphabetically later take precedence.

Web Server Configuration

These configuration variables are under the [desktop] section in the hue.ini configuration file.

Specifying the Hue HTTP Address

Hue uses CherryPy web server. You can use the following options to change the IP address and port that the web server listens on. The default setting is port 8888 on all configured IP addresses.

# Webserver listens on this address and port
http_host=0.0.0.0
http_port=8888

Specifying the Secret Key

For security, you should also specify the secret key that is used for secure hashing in the session store. Enter a long series of random characters (30 to 60 characters is recommended).

secret_key=jFE93j;2[290-eiw.KEiwN2s3['d;/.q[eIW^y#e=+Iei*@Mn<qW5o

NOTE: If you don't specify a secret key, your session cookies will not be secure. Hue will run but it will also display error messages telling you to set the secret key.

Disabling some apps

In the Hue ini configuration file, in the [desktop] section, you can enter the names of the app to hide:

[desktop]
# Comma separated list of apps to not load at server startup.
app_blacklist=beeswax,impala,security,filebrowser,jobbrowser,rdbms,jobsub,pig,hbase,sqoop,zookeeper,metastore,spark,oozie,indexer

Read more about it here.

Authentication

By default, the first user who logs in to Hue can choose any username and password and becomes an administrator automatically. This user can create other user and administrator accounts. User information is stored in the Django database in the Django backend.

The authentication system is pluggable. For more information, see the Hue SDK Documentation.

List of some of the possible authentications:

Username / Password

LDAP

SAML

Read more about it.

OpenId Connect

Multiple Authentication Backends

For example, to enable Hue to first attempt LDAP directory lookup before falling back to the database-backed user model, we can update the hue.ini configuration file or Hue safety valve in Cloudera Manager with a list containing first the LdapBackend followed by either the ModelBackend or custom AllowFirstUserDjangoBackend (permits first login and relies on user model for all subsequent authentication):

[desktop]
  [[auth]]
  backend=desktop.auth.backend.LdapBackend,desktop.auth.backend.AllowFirstUserDjangoBackend

This tells Hue to first check against the configured LDAP directory service, and if the username is not found in the directory, then attempt to authenticate the user with the Django user manager.

Read more about it here.

Configure Hue with a Proxy

We explained how to run Hue with NGINX serving the static files or under Apache. If you use another proxy, you might need to set these options:

[desktop]
# Enable X-Forwarded-Host header if the load balancer requires it.
use_x_forwarded_host=false
 
# Support for HTTPS termination at the load-balancer level with SECURE_PROXY_SSL_HEADER.
secure_proxy_ssl_header=false

Configuring Hue for SSL

You can configure Hue to serve over HTTPS.

  1. Configure Hue to use your private key by adding the following options to the hue.ini configuration file:

    ssl_certificate=/path/to/certificate ssl_private_key=/path/to/key

  2. Ideally, you would have an appropriate key signed by a Certificate Authority. If you're just testing, you can create a self-signed key using the openssl command that may be installed on your system:

Create a key:

openssl genrsa 1024 > host.key

Create a self-signed certificate:

openssl req -new -x509 -nodes -sha1 -key host.key > host.cert
Self-signed Certificates and File Uploads To upload files using the Hue File Browser over HTTPS requires using a proper SSL Certificate. Self-signed certificates don't work.

User Admin Configuration

In the [useradmin] section of the configuration file, you can optionally specify the following:

default_user_group:: The name of a default group that is suggested when creating a user manually. If the LdapBackend or PamBackend are configured for doing user authentication, new users will automatically be members of the default group.

Banner

You can add a custom banner to the Hue Web UI by applying HTML directly to the property, banner_top_html. For example:

banner_top_html=<H4>My company's custom Hue Web UI banner</H4>

Splash Screen

You can customize a splash screen on the login page by applying HTML directly to the property, login_splash_html. For example:

[desktop]
[[custom]]
login_splash_html=WARNING: You are required to have authorization before you proceed.

Custom Logo

There is also the possibility to change the logo for further personalization.

[desktop]
[[custom]]
# SVG code to replace the default Hue logo in the top bar and sign in screen
# e.g. <image xlink:href="/static/desktop/art/hue-logo-mini-white.png" x="0" y="0" height="40" width="160" />
logo_svg=

You can go crazy and write there any SVG code you want. Please keep in mind your SVG should be designed to fit in a 160×40 pixels space. To have the same ‘hearts logo’ you can see above, you can type this code

[desktop]
[[custom]]
logo_svg='<g><path stroke="null" id="svg_1" d="m44.41215,11.43463c-4.05017,-10.71473 -17.19753,-5.90773 -18.41353,-0.5567c-1.672,-5.70253 -14.497,-9.95663 -18.411,0.5643c-4.35797,11.71793 16.891,22.23443 18.41163,23.95773c1.5181,-1.36927 22.7696,-12.43803 18.4129,-23.96533z" fill="#ffffff"/> <path stroke="null" id="svg_2" d="m98.41246,10.43463c-4.05016,-10.71473 -17.19753,-5.90773 -18.41353,-0.5567c-1.672,-5.70253 -14.497,-9.95663 -18.411,0.5643c-4.35796,11.71793 16.891,22.23443 18.41164,23.95773c1.5181,-1.36927 22.76959,-12.43803 18.41289,-23.96533z" fill="#FF5A79"/> <path stroke="null" id="svg_3" d="m154.41215,11.43463c-4.05016,-10.71473 -17.19753,-5.90773 -18.41353,-0.5567c-1.672,-5.70253 -14.497,-9.95663 -18.411,0.5643c-4.35796,11.71793 16.891,22.23443 18.41164,23.95773c1.5181,-1.36927 22.76959,-12.43803 18.41289,-23.96533z" fill="#ffffff"/> </g>'

Read more about it in Hue with a custom logo post.

Storing passwords in file script

This article details how to store passwords in a script launched from the OS rather than have clear text passwords in the hue*.ini files.

Some passwords go in Hue ini configuration file making them easily visible to Hue admin user or by users of cluster management software. You can use the password_script feature to prevent passwords from being visible.

Idle session timeout

Hue now offers a new property, idle_session_timeout, that can be configured in the hue.ini file:

[desktop]
[[auth]]
idle_session_timeout=600

When idle_session_timeout is set, users will automatically be logged out after N (e.g. – 600) seconds of inactivity and be prompted to login again:

Read more about it here.

Auditing

Read more about Auditing User Administration Operations with Hue and Cloudera Navigator.

Configuration for external services

These configuration variables are under the [hadoop] section in the hue.ini configuration file.

Install Hadoop and other analytic backends

Depending on which apps you need, you need to make sure that some Hadoop services are already setup (that way Hue can talk to them).

|-------------|--------------------------------------------------------|
|  Component  | Applications                                           |
|-------------|--------------------------------------------------------|
|  Editor     | SQL (Hive, Impala, any database...), Pig, Spark...     |
|  Browsers   | YARN, Oozie, Impala, HBase, Livy                       |
|  Scheduler  | Oozie                                                  |
|  Dashboard  | Solr, SQL (Impala, Hive...)                            |
|-------------|--------------------------------------------------------|
Hadoop Configuration

You need to enable WebHdfs or run an HttpFS server. To turn on WebHDFS, add this to your hdfs-site.xml and restart your HDFS cluster. Depending on your setup, your hdfs-site.xml might be in /etc/hadoop/conf.

<property>
  <name>dfs.webhdfs.enabled</name>
  <value>true</value>
</property>

You also need to add this to core-site.xml.

<property>
  <name>hadoop.proxyuser.hue.hosts</name>
  <value>*</value>
</property>
<property>
  <name>hadoop.proxyuser.hue.groups</name>
  <value>*</value>
</property>

If you place your Hue Server outside the Hadoop cluster, you can run an HttpFS server to provide Hue access to HDFS. The HttpFS service requires only one port to be opened to the cluster.

Also add this in httpfs-site.xml which might be in /etc/hadoop-httpfs/conf.

<property>
  <name>httpfs.proxyuser.hue.hosts</name>
  <value>*</value>
</property>
<property>
  <name>httpfs.proxyuser.hue.groups</name>
  <value>*</value>
</property>

Configure Oozie

Hue submits MapReduce jobs to Oozie as the logged in user. You need to configure Oozie to accept the hue user to be a proxyuser. Specify this in your oozie-site.xml (even in a non-secure cluster), and restart Oozie:

<property>
    <name>oozie.service.ProxyUserService.proxyuser.hue.hosts</name>
    <value>*</value>
</property>
<property>
    <name>oozie.service.ProxyUserService.proxyuser.hue.groups</name>
    <value>*</value>
</property>

Hive Configuration

Hue's Hive SQL Editor application helps you use Hive to query your data. It depends on a Hive Server 2 running in the cluster. Please read this section to ensure a proper integration.

Your Hive data is stored in HDFS, normally under /user/hive/warehouse (or any path you specify as hive.metastore.warehouse.dir in your hive-site.xml). Make sure this location exists and is writable by the users whom you expect to be creating tables. /tmp (on the local file system) must be world-writable (1777), as Hive makes extensive use of it.

In `hue.ini`, modify `hive_conf_dir` to point to the directory containing `hive-site.xml`.

Configuring Your Firewall

Hue currently requires that the machines within your cluster can connect to each other freely over TCP. The machines outside your cluster must be able to open TCP port 8888 on the Hue Server (or the configured Hue web HTTP port) to interact with the system.

Files

HDFS Cluster

Hue supports one HDFS cluster. That cluster should be defined under the [[[default]]] sub-section.

fs_defaultfs:: This is the equivalence of fs.defaultFS (aka fs.default.name) in Hadoop configuration.

webhdfs_url:: You can also set this to be the HttpFS url. The default value is the HTTP port on the NameNode.

hadoop_conf_dir:: This is the configuration directory of the HDFS, typically /etc/hadoop/conf.

S3

Hue’s filebrowser can now allow users to explore, manage, and upload data in an S3 account, in addition to HDFS.

Read more about it in the S3 User Documentation.

In order to add an S3 account to Hue, you’ll need to configure Hue with valid S3 credentials, including the access key ID and secret access key: AWSCredentials

These keys can securely stored in a script that outputs the actual access key and secret key to stdout to be read by Hue (this is similar to how Hue reads password scripts). In order to use script files, add the following section to your hue.ini configuration file:

[aws]
[[aws_accounts]]
[[[default]]]
access_key_id_script=/path/to/access_key_script
secret_access_key_script= /path/to/secret_key_script
allow_environment_credentials=false
region=us-east-1

Alternatively (but not recommended for production or secure environments), you can set the access_key_id and secret_access_key values to the plain-text values of your keys:

[aws]
[[aws_accounts]]
[[[default]]]
access_key_id=s3accesskeyid
secret_access_key=s3secretaccesskey
allow_environment_credentials=false
region=us-east-1

The region should be set to the AWS region corresponding to the S3 account. By default, this region will be set to ‘us-east-1’.

Using Ceph New end points have been added in [HUE-5420](https://issues.cloudera.org/browse/HUE-5420)

ADLS

Hue’s file browser can now allow users to explore, manage, and upload data in an ADLS, in addition to HDFS and S3.

Read more about it in the ADLS User Documentation.

In order to add an ADLS account to Hue, you’ll need to configure Hue with valid ADLS credentials, including the client ID, client secret and tenant ID. These keys can securely stored in a script that outputs the actual access key and secret key to stdout to be read by Hue (this is similar to how Hue reads password scripts). In order to use script files, add the following section to your hue.ini configuration file:

[adls]
[[azure_accounts]]
[[[default]]]
client_id_script=/path/to/client_id_script.sh
client_secret_script=/path/to/client_secret_script.sh
tenant_id_script=/path/to/tenant_id_script.sh
 
[[adls_clusters]]
[[[default]]]
fs_defaultfs=adl://.azuredatalakestore.net
webhdfs_url=https://.azuredatalakestore.net

Alternatively (but not recommended for production or secure environments), you can set the client_secret value in plain-text:

[adls]
[[azure_account]]
[[[default]]]
client_id=adlsclientid
client_secret=adlsclientsecret
tenant_id=adlstenantid
 
[[adls_clusters]]
[[[default]]]
fs_defaultfs=adl://.azuredatalakestore.net
webhdfs_url=https://.azuredatalakestore.net

Yarn (MR2) Cluster

Hue supports one or two Yarn clusters (two for HA). These clusters should be defined under the [[[default]]] and [[[ha]]] sub-sections.

resourcemanager_host:: The host running the ResourceManager.

resourcemanager_port:: The port for the ResourceManager REST service.

logical_name:: NameNode logical name.

submit_to:: To enable the section, set to True.

Impala Configuration

In the [impala] section of the configuration file, you can optionally specify the following:

server_host:: The hostname or IP that the Impala Server should bind to. By default it binds to localhost, and therefore only serves local IPC clients.

LDAP or PAM pass-through authentication with Hive or Impala and Impersonation .

Hive Configuration

In the [beeswax] section of the configuration file, you can optionally specify the following:

beeswax_server_host:: The hostname or IP that the Hive Server should bind to. By default it binds to localhost, and therefore only serves local IPC clients.

hive_conf_dir:: The directory containing your hive-site.xml Hive configuration file.

JDBC

Use the query editor with any JDBC or Django-compatible database.

Oozie Configuration

In the [liboozie] section of the configuration file, you should specify:

oozie_url:: The URL of the Oozie service. It is the same as the OOZIE_URL environment variable for Oozie.

Solr Configuration

In the [search] section of the configuration file, you should specify:

solr_url:: The URL of the Solr service.

HBase Configuration

In the [hbase] section of the configuration file, you should specify:

hbase_clusters:: Comma-separated list of HBase Thrift servers for clusters in the format of "(name|host:port)".

Change your maps look and feel

The properties we need to tweak are leaflet_tile_layer and leaflet_tile_layer_attribution, that can be configured in the hue.ini file:

[desktop]
leaflet_tile_layer=https://server.arcgisonline.com/ArcGIS/rest/services/World_Imagery/MapServer/tile/{z}/{y}/{x}
leaflet_tile_layer_attribution='Tiles © Esri — Source: Esri, i-cubed, USDA, USGS, AEX, GeoEye, Getmapping, Aerogrid, IGN, IGP, UPR-EGP, and the GIS User Community'

Read more about it here.

Reset a password

Read more about it here.

Configuration Validation

Hue can detect certain invalid configuration.

To view the configuration of a running Hue instance, navigate to http://myserver:8888/hue/dump_config, also accessible through the About application.

Administration

Now that you've installed and started Hue, you can feel free to skip ahead to the <> section. Administrators may want to refer to this section for more details about managing and operating a Hue installation.

Server Logs

Displays the Hue Server log and allows you to download the log to your local system in a zip file.

User management

The User Admin application lets a superuser add, delete, and manage Hue users and groups, and configure group permissions. Superusers can add users and groups individually, or import them from an LDAP directory. Group permissions define the Hue applications visible to group members when they log into Hue and the application features available to them.

Click the User Admin icon in the top right navigation bar under your username.

LDAP

LDAP or PAM pass-through authentication with Hive or Impala and Impersonation .

Users

The User Admin application provides two levels of user privileges: superusers and users.

  • Superusers — The first user who logs into Hue after its initial installation becomes the first superuser. Superusers have permissions to perform administrative functions:

    • Add and delete users
    • Add and delete groups
    • Assign permissions to groups
    • Change a user into a superuser
    • Import users and groups from an LDAP server
  • Users — can change their name, e-mail address, and password and log in to Hue and run Hue applications, subject to the permissions provided by the Hue groups to which they belong.

Adding a User

  1. In the User Admin page, click Add User.
  2. In the Credentials screen, add required information about the user. Once you provide the required information you can click the wizard step tabs to set other information.

Username A user name that contains only letters, numbers, and underscores;

blank spaces are not allowed and the name cannot begin with a
number. The user name is used to log into Hue and in file
permissions and job submissions. This is a required field.

Password and Password confirmation A password for the user. This is a required field.
Create home directory Indicate whether to create a directory named /user/username in HDFS.

For non-superusers, the user and group of the directory are
username. For superusers, the user and group are username and
supergroup.</td></tr></table>
  1. Click Add User to save the information you specified and close the Add User wizard or click Next.
  2. In the Names and Groups screen, add optional information.
First name and Last name The user's first and last name.
E-mail addressThe user's e-mail address. The e-mail address is used by the Job Designer and Beeswax applications to send users an e-mail message after certain actions have occurred. The Job Designer sends an e-mail message after a job has completed. Beeswax sends a message after a query has completed. If an e-mail address is not specified, the application will not attempt to email the user.
Groups The groups to which the user belongs. By default, a user is assigned to the **default** group, which allows access to all applications. See [Permissions](#permissions).
  1. Click Add User to save the information you specified and close the Add User wizard or click Next.
  2. In the Advanced screen, add status information.
Active Indicate that the user is enabled and allowed to log in. Default: checked.
Superuser status Assign superuser privileges to the user.
  1. Click Add User to save the information you specified and close the Add User wizard.

Deleting a User

  1. Check the checkbox next to the user name and click Delete.
  2. Click Yes to confirm.

Editing a User

  1. Click the user you want to edit in the Hue Users list.
  2. Make the changes to the user and then click Update user.

Importing Users from an LDAP Directory

image Note:

Importing users from an LDAP directory does not import any password information. You must add passwords manually in order for a user to log in.

To add a user from an external LDAP directory:

  1. Click Add/sync LDAP user.
  2. Specify the user properties:
UsernameThe user name.
Distinguished nameIndicate that Hue should use a full distinguished name for the user. This imports the user's first and last name, username, and email, but does not store the user password.
Create home directory Indicate that Hue should create a home directory for the user in HDFS.
  1. Click Add/sync user.

    If the user already exists in the User Admin, the user information in User Admin is synced with what is currently in the LDAP directory.

Syncing Users and Groups with an LDAP Directory

You can sync the Hue user database with the current state of the LDAP directory using the Sync LDAP users/groups function. This updates the user and group information for the already imported users and groups. It does not import any new users or groups.

  1. Click Sync LDAP users/groups.
  2. The Create Home Directories checkbox creates home directories in HDFS for existing imported members that don't have home directories.
  3. In the Sync LDAP users and groups dialog, click Sync to perform the sync.

Groups

Superusers can add and delete groups, configure group permissions, and assign users to group memberships.

Adding a Group

You can add groups, and delete the groups you've added. You can also import groups from an LDAP directory.

  1. In the User Admin window, click Groups and then click Add Group.
  2. Specify the group properties:
Name The name of the group. Group names can only be letters, numbers, and underscores; blank spaces are not allowed.
MembersThe users in the group. Check user names or check Select all.
PermissionsThe applications the users in the group can access. Check application names or check Select all.
  1. Click Add group.

Adding Users to a Group

  1. In the User Admin window, click Groups.
  2. Click the group.
  3. To add users to the group, check the names in the list provided or check Select All.
  4. Click Update group.

Deleting a Group

  1. Click Groups.
  2. Check the checkbox next to the group and click Delete.
  3. Click Yes to confirm.

Importing Groups from an LDAP Directory

  1. From the Groups tab, click Add/sync LDAP group.
  2. Specify the group properties:
Name The name of the group.
Distinguished name Indicate that Hue should use a full distinguished name for the group.
Import new members Indicate that Hue should import the members of the group.
Import new members from all subgroups Indicate that Hue should import the members of the subgroups.
Create home directories Indicate that Hue should create home directories in HDFS for the imported members.
  1. Click Add/sync group.

Permissions

Permissions for Hue applications are granted to groups, with users gaining permissions based on their group membership. Group permissions define the Hue applications visible to group members when they log into Hue and the application features available to them.

  1. Click Permissions.
  2. Click the application for which you want to assign permissions.
  3. Check the checkboxes next to the groups you want to have permission for the application. Check Select all to select all groups.
  4. Click Update permission. The new groups will appear in the Groups column in the Hue Permissions list.

Read more about it here.

Process Hierarchy

A script called supervisor manages all Hue processes. The supervisor is a watchdog process -- its only purpose is to spawn and monitor other processes. A standard Hue installation starts and monitors the following processes:

  • runcpserver - a web server based on CherryPy that provides the core web functionality of Hue

If you have installed other applications into your Hue instance, you may see other daemons running under the supervisor as well.

You can see the supervised processes running in the output of ps -f -u hue:

UID        PID  PPID  C STIME TTY          TIME CMD
hue       8685  8679  0 Aug05 ?        00:01:39 /usr/share/hue/build/env/bin/python /usr/share/hue/build/env/bin/desktop runcpserver

Note that the supervisor automatically restarts these processes if they fail for any reason. If the processes fail repeatedly within a short time, the supervisor itself shuts down.

Hue Logging

The Hue logs are found in /var/log/hue, or in a logs directory under your Hue installation root. Inside the log directory you can find:

  • An access.log file, which contains a log for all requests against the Hue web server.
  • A supervisor.log file, which contains log information for the supervisor process.
  • A supervisor.out file, which contains the stdout and stderr for the supervisor process.
  • A .log file for each supervised process described above, which contains the logs for that process.
  • A .out file for each supervised process described above, which contains the stdout and stderr for that process.

If users on your cluster have problems running Hue, you can often find error messages in these log files. If you are unable to start Hue from the init script, the supervisor.log log file can often contain clues.

Viewing Recent Log Messages

In addition to logging INFO level messages to the logs directory, the Hue web server keeps a small buffer of log messages at all levels in memory. You can view these logs by visiting http://myserver:8888/hue/logs. The DEBUG level messages shown can sometimes be helpful in troubleshooting issues.

Database

Hue requires a SQL database to store small amounts of data, including user account information as well as history of job submissions and Hive queries. By default, Hue is configured to use the embedded database SQLite for this purpose, and should require no configuration or management by the administrator. However, MySQL is the recommended database to use. This section contains instructions for configuring Hue to access MySQL and other databases.

Inspecting the Database

The default SQLite database used by Hue is located in: /usr/share/hue/desktop/desktop.db. You can inspect this database from the command line using the sqlite3 program or typing `/usr/share/hue/build/env/bin/hue dbshell'. For example:

sqlite3 /usr/share/hue/desktop/desktop.db
SQLite version 3.6.22
Enter ".help" for instructions
Enter SQL statements terminated with a ";"
sqlite> select username from auth_user;
admin
test
sample
sqlite>

It is strongly recommended that you avoid making any modifications to the database directly using SQLite, though this trick can be useful for management or troubleshooting.

Backing up the Database

If you use the default SQLite database, then copy the desktop.db file to another node for backup. It is recommended that you back it up on a regular schedule, and also that you back it up before any upgrade to a new version of Hue.

Configuring to Access Another Database

Although SQLite is the default database type, some advanced users may prefer to have Hue access an alternate database type. Note that if you elect to configure Hue to use an external database, upgrades may require more manual steps in the future.

The following instructions are for MySQL, though you can also configure Hue to work with other common databases such as PostgreSQL and Oracle.

Note that Hue has only been tested with SQLite and MySQL database backends.

Configuring to Store Data in MySQL

To configure Hue to store data in MySQL:

  1. Create a new database in MySQL and grant privileges to a Hue user to manage this database.

    mysql> create database hue; Query OK, 1 row affected (0.01 sec) mysql> grant all on hue.* to 'hue'@'localhost' identified by 'secretpassword'; Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.00 sec)

  2. Shut down Hue if it is running.

  3. To migrate your existing data to MySQL, use the following command to dump the existing database data to a text file. Note that using the ".json" extension is required.

    /usr/share/hue/build/env/bin/hue dumpdata > $some-temporary-file.json

  4. Open the hue.ini file in a text editor. Directly below the [[database]] line, add the following options (and modify accordingly for your MySQL setup):

    host=localhost port=3306 engine=mysql user=hue password=secretpassword name=hue

  5. As the Hue user, configure Hue to load the existing data and create the necessary database tables:

    /usr/share/hue/build/env/bin/hue syncdb --noinput mysql -uhue -psecretpassword -e "DELETE FROM hue.django_content_type;" /usr/share/hue/build/env/bin/hue loaddata $temporary-file-containing-dumped-data.json

Your system is now configured and you can start the Hue server as normal.

Using Hue

After installation, you can use Hue by navigating to http://myserver:8888/.

The link:user-guide/index.html[user guide] will help users go through the various installed applications.

Supported Browsers

The two latest LTS versions of each browsers:

  • IE/Edge
  • Safari
  • Chrome
  • Firefox

Feedback

Your feedback is welcome. The best way to send feedback is to join the https://groups.google.com/a/cloudera.org/group/hue-user[mailing list], and send e-mail, to mailto:hue-user@cloudera.org[hue-user@cloudera.org].

Reporting Bugs

If you find that something doesn't work, it'll often be helpful to include logs from your server. Please include the logs as a zip (or cut and paste the ones that look relevant) and send those with your bug reports.