CDH 5.5 QuickStart VM + VirtualBox 5.0.12 => read-only filesystem error

[#1]

Hi all

I am trying both CDH and VirtualBox for the first time so apologies in advance if this is a basic error.  My configuration is as follows:

CDH 5.5 QuickStart VM

VirtualBox 5.0.12

OS X 10.11.2

MacBook Pro (Retina, 13-inch, Early 2015)

Memory: 8 GB

I have successfully installed VirtualBox and downloaded the QuickStart VM.  When creating a new VM for CDH 5.5, I use the following options in VirtualBox:

Type: Linux

Version: Other Linux (64-bit)

Memory: 4096 MB (I am aware that I ought to use more but I lack memory on my laptop and don't believe that this is the cause of my problem)

Hard disk: "Use an existing virtual hard disk file" (I select the downloaded cloudera-quickstart-vm-5.5.0-0-virtualbox-disk1.vmdk file)

Then, when I try to start the VM, I see a large number of read-only filesystem errors and most services fail to start, e.g.

touch: cannot touch '/var/lock/subsys/atd': Read-only file system

A few services do start, e.g. Impala Server (impalad).

All of the filesystem errors appear to refer to the /var filesystem.

As per the instructions at http://www.cloudera.com/content/www/en-us/downloads/quickstart_vms/5-5.html, I have tried the following but with no effect:

"Some users have reported problems running CentOS 6.4 in VirtualBox. If a kernel panic occurs while the VirtualBox VM is booting, you can try working around this problem by opening the Settings > System > Motherboard tab, and selecting ICH9 instead of PIIX3 for the chip set. If you have not already done so, you must also enable I/O APIC on the same tab."

That's not surprising since my issue is the /var read-only filesystem, not a kernel panic.

Thanks in advance for any advice.

Kevin

[#2 · Accepted solution]

Kevin,

4096 MB should be sufficient unless you want to launch Cloudera Manager.
All of the CDH services should be able to start up and simple examples
should work pretty reliably.

As for your issue, I would suggest going to File -> Import Appliance... and
opening the .ovf file in the directory you unzipped. That file will set up
the virtual hardware for you (instead of you setting up everything but the
hard disk) so it eliminates a lot of variables. Not sure what the root
cause of the issue is, but that's a good first step.

[#3]

Many thanks Sean.  (I posted much the same thing as I found a clue on another thread but my post crossed with yours.)

[#4]

Excuse me Sean, I'm new to Cloudera.
If I don't launch Cloudera Manager, what can I do with the VM?
Thank you,
Silvia

[#5]

Everything in CDH is set up and running without Cloudera Manager. You can complete the tutorial (although a few sections will be irrelevant and get hidden if Cloudera Manager isn't launched), and all the examples in Hue should work (Hue has an option built-in to install examples for Hive & Impala SQL queries, the HBase and Search apps, Pig scripts and more). You can also run Hadoop and Spark jobs, etc. Pretty much anything you would actually use to store and process data should work.

[#6]

Thank you! I had the same problem and it has solved it. Unfortunately there is a lot of old installation tutorial that fail to mention that.

[#7]

Update: solved this one myself.  Instead of doing what I did, I should have invoked File -> Import Appliance and selected the OVF file.  That approach works much better 🙂