We too have the similar issue while reading from the hbase snapshot . Here is our senario Created a table in HBASE (create 'TEST_HBASE_TABLE','cf') Created a hive external hbase table with name TEST_EXTERNAL_HBASE_TABLE created snapshot for (snapshot 'TEST_HBASE_TABLE','TEST_SNAPSHOT') set the hive hbase property (set hive.hbase.snapshot.name=TEST_SNAPSHOT) execute the query ( select * from TEST_EXTERNAL_HBASE_TABLE ) got the below exception . Need some help in fixing this issue 2015-09-28 16:10:29,025 WARN org.apache.hadoop.security.UserGroupInformation: PriviledgedActionException as:hbase_user (auth:SIMPLE) cause:org.apache.hive.service.cli.Hivetion: java.io.IOException: java.io.IOException: java.lang.NoClassDefFoundError: Could not initialize class org.apache.hadoop.hbase.io.hfile.CacheStats org.apache.hive.service.cli.HiveSQLException: java.io.IOException: java.io.IOException: java.lang.NoClassDefFoundError: Could not initialize class org.apache.hadoop.hbasle.CacheStats at org.apache.hive.service.cli.operation.SQLOperation.getNextRowSet(SQLOperation.java:329) at org.apache.hive.service.cli.operation.OperationManager.getOperationNextRowSet(OperationManager.java:250) at org.apache.hive.service.cli.session.HiveSessionImpl.fetchResults(HiveSessionImpl.java:699) at sun.reflect.GeneratedMethodAccessor4.invoke(Unknown Source) at sun.reflect.DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.java:43) at java.lang.reflect.Method.invoke(Method.java:497) at org.apache.hive.service.cli.session.HiveSessionProxy.invoke(HiveSessionProxy.java:78) at org.apache.hive.service.cli.session.HiveSessionProxy.access$000(HiveSessionProxy.java:36) at org.apache.hive.service.cli.session.HiveSessionProxy$1.run(HiveSessionProxy.java:63) at java.security.AccessController.doPrivileged(Native Method) at javax.security.auth.Subject.doAs(Subject.java:422) at org.apache.hadoop.security.UserGroupInformation.doAs(UserGroupInformation.java:1671) at org.apache.hive.service.cli.session.HiveSessionProxy.invoke(HiveSessionProxy.java:59) at com.sun.proxy.$Proxy17.fetchResults(Unknown Source) at org.apache.hive.service.cli.CLIService.fetchResults(CLIService.java:451) at org.apache.hive.service.cli.thrift.ThriftCLIService.FetchResults(ThriftCLIService.java:676) at org.apache.hive.service.cli.thrift.TCLIService$Processor$FetchResults.getResult(TCLIService.java:1553) at org.apache.hive.service.cli.thrift.TCLIService$Processor$FetchResults.getResult(TCLIService.java:1538) at org.apache.thrift.ProcessFunction.process(ProcessFunction.java:39) at org.apache.thrift.TBaseProcessor.process(TBaseProcessor.java:39) at org.apache.hive.service.auth.TSetIpAddressProcessor.process(TSetIpAddressProcessor.java:56) at org.apache.thrift.server.TThreadPoolServer$WorkerProcess.run(TThreadPoolServer.java:285) at java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor.runWorker(ThreadPoolExecutor.java:1142) at java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor$Worker.run(ThreadPoolExecutor.java:617) at java.lang.Thread.run(Thread.java:745) Caused by: java.io.IOException: java.io.IOException: java.lang.NoClassDefFoundError: Could not initialize class org.apache.hadoop.hbase.io.hfile.CacheStats at org.apache.hadoop.hive.ql.exec.FetchOperator.getNextRow(FetchOperator.java:507) at org.apache.hadoop.hive.ql.exec.FetchOperator.pushRow(FetchOperator.java:414) at org.apache.hadoop.hive.ql.exec.FetchTask.fetch(FetchTask.java:138) at org.apache.hadoop.hive.ql.Driver.getResults(Driver.java:1657) at org.apache.hive.service.cli.operation.SQLOperation.getNextRowSet(SQLOperation.java:324) ... 24 more Caused by: java.io.IOException: java.lang.NoClassDefFoundError: Could not initialize class org.apache.hadoop.hbase.io.hfile.CacheStats at org.apache.hadoop.hbase.regionserver.HRegion.initializeRegionStores(HRegion.java:951) at org.apache.hadoop.hbase.regionserver.HRegion.initializeRegionInternals(HRegion.java:841) at org.apache.hadoop.hbase.regionserver.HRegion.initialize(HRegion.java:814) at org.apache.hadoop.hbase.regionserver.HRegion.openHRegion(HRegion.java:5828) at org.apache.hadoop.hbase.regionserver.HRegion.openHRegion(HRegion.java:5794) at org.apache.hadoop.hbase.regionserver.HRegion.openHRegion(HRegion.java:5765) at org.apache.hadoop.hbase.client.ClientSideRegionScanner.<init>(ClientSideRegionScanner.java:57) at org.apache.hadoop.hbase.mapreduce.TableSnapshotInputFormatImpl$RecordReader.initialize(TableSnapshotInputFormatImpl.java:190) at org.apache.hadoop.hbase.mapred.TableSnapshotInputFormat$TableSnapshotRecordReader.<init>(TableSnapshotInputFormat.java:96) at org.apache.hadoop.hbase.mapred.TableSnapshotInputFormat.getRecordReader(TableSnapshotInputFormat.java:150) at org.apache.hadoop.hive.hbase.HiveHBaseTableSnapshotInputFormat.getRecordReader(HiveHBaseTableSnapshotInputFormat.java:74) ... View more