It seems your namenode or datanode is in safemode. So we need to leave the safe mode to insert data in hdfs or hbase table in hdfs. We can use following command to leave the safe mode of the namenode or datanode: hadoop@Sanjeev:~$ hdfs dfsadmin -safemode leave On successful execution this message is shown: Safe mode is OFF And after this above error does not occur and the hbase shell runs properly. ... View more