HDP 3.1, HBase Phoenix and IBM Java

 I spent several sleepless nights trying to sort a nasty problem. While connecting to HBase Phoenix, the Phoenix client was stalled before displaying the prompt.
/usr/hdp/current/phoenix-client/bin/sqlline.py
Setting property: [incremental, false]
Setting property: [isolation, TRANSACTION_READ_COMMITTED]
issuing: !connect jdbc:phoenix: none none org.apache.phoenix.jdbc.PhoenixDriver
Connecting to jdbc:phoenix:
SLF4J: Class path contains multiple SLF4J bindings.
SLF4J: Found binding in [jar:file:/usr/hdp/3.1.0.0-78/phoenix/phoenix-5.0.0.3.1.0.0-78-client.jar!/org/slf4j/impl/StaticLoggerBinder.class]
SLF4J: Found binding in [jar:file:/usr/hdp/3.1.0.0-78/hadoop/lib/slf4j-log4j12-1.7.25.jar!/org/slf4j/impl/StaticLoggerBinder.class]
SLF4J: See http://www.slf4j.org/codes.html#multiple_bindings for an explanation.
20/08/07 11:28:08 WARN util.NativeCodeLoader: Unable to load native-hadoop library for your platform... using builtin-java classes where applicable

What's more, there was no single error message, neither from the client nor in the HBase log file, Master or Region Servers. Simply nothing, no clue. Besides that, everything was healthy and running soundly.

The first step toward the solution was to enable tracing in Phoenix client. This setting is not managed by Ambari and requires manual modification.

vi /usr/hdp/3.1.0.0-78/phoenix/bin/log4j.properties
....
#psql.root.logger=WARN,console
psql.root.logger=TRACE,console

After TRACING was enabled, the sqlline client was more talkative and provided the first clue. INFO client.RpcRetryingCallerImpl: Call exception, tries=6, retries=36, started=4724 ms ago, cancelled=false, msg=Call to data2-worker.mycloud.com/10.135.118.222:16020 failed on local exception: javax.security.sasl.SaslException: Failure to initialize security context [Caused by org.ietf.jgss.GSSException, major code: 13, minor code: 0
major string: Invalid credentials
minor string: SubjectCredFinder: no JAAS Subject], details=row 'SYSTEM:CATALOG' on table 'hbase:meta' at region=hbase:meta,,1.1588230740, hostname=data2-worker.mycloud.com,16020,1596794212924, seqNum=-1
The HDP cluster was Kerberized and the problem seemed to be related to Kerberos authentication. Kerberos is the source of many problems but everything except this worked smoothly here.

Finally, I found the hint under this link. The culprit was IBM Java. The cluster is running under control of  OpenJDK Java but the sqlline client is using default host Java. update-alternatives --config java

There are 3 programs which provide 'java'.

Selection Command
-----------------------------------------------
*+ 1 /usr/lib/jvm/java-1.8.0-ibm-1.8.0.5.10-1jpp.1.el7.x86_64/jre/bin/java
2 /usr/jdk64/java-1.8.0-openjdk-1.8.0.77-0.b03.el7_2.x86_64/jre/bin/java
3 /usr/java/jdk1.8.0_202-amd64/jre/bin/java

So the solution was extremely simple, just switch to OpenJDK Java and Phoenix client works like a dream.