https://community.cloudera.com/t5/Support-Questions/Beeline-Configuration-hiveconf-Equivalent/m-p/163364#M125738 <P>I got it working now. Here is what I did</P><PRE>[LAKE] [smanjee@lake1 ~]# beeline -u "jdbc:hive2://example.com:2181,example.com:2181,example:2181/;serviceDiscoveryMode=zooKeeper;zooKeeperNamespace=hiveserver2" --hiveconf hive.execution.engine=mr </PRE><P>and it worked. I was missing the " " around the jdbc</P><PRE>0: jdbc:hive2://example.com:2&gt; set hive.execution.engine; +---------------------------+--+ | set | +---------------------------+--+ | hive.execution.engine=mr | +---------------------------+--+ 1 row selected (0.192 seconds) 0: jdbc:hive2://example.com:2&gt; </PRE> Tue, 20 Dec 2016 11:16:04 GMT sunile_manjee 2016-12-20T11:16:04Z