Hello @ronics, I had the same error few days back, Following is the exception Exception in thread "main" java.lang.RuntimeException: com.ctc.wstx.exc.WstxParsingException: Illegal character entity: expansion character (code 0x8 at [row,col,system-id]: [3215,96,"file:/home/hadoop/hive/conf/hive-site.xml"] Open hive-site.xml file and go to the 3215th row.  It is throwing that error, as there is a special character () between the words for and transactional. Either delete that character or copy and paste (replace) which the next 2 lines. Ensures commands with OVERWRITE (such as INSERT OVERWRITE) acquire Exclusive locks for transactional tables. This ensures that inserts (w/o overwrite) running concurrently are not hidden by the INSERT OVERWRITE.  This should solve your problem. ... View more