Apache Hadoop 0.17.0 Release Notes

These release notes cover new developer and user-facing incompatibilities, important issues, features, and major improvements.


This bug allows non default path to specifeid in fsshell commands.

So, you can now specify hadoop dfs -ls hdfs://remotehost1:port/path and hadoop dfs -ls hdfs://remotehost2:port/path without changing the config.


Introduce new namenode transactions to support appending to HDFS files.


This feature provides facility to store job history on DFS. Now cluster admin can provide either localFS location or DFS location using configuration property “mapred.job.history.location” to store job histroy. History will be logged in user specified location also. User can specify history location using configuration property “mapred.job.history.user.location” . The classes org.apache.hadoop.mapred.DefaultJobHistoryParser.MasterIndex and org.apache.hadoop.mapred.DefaultJobHistoryParser.MasterIndexParseListener, and public method org.apache.hadoop.mapred.DefaultJobHistoryParser.parseMasterIndex are not available. The signature of public method org.apache.hadoop.mapred.DefaultJobHistoryParser.parseJobTasks(File jobHistoryFile, JobHistory.JobInfo job) is changed to DefaultJobHistoryParser.parseJobTasks(String jobHistoryFile, JobHistory.JobInfo job, FileSystem fs). The signature of public method org.apache.hadoop.mapred.JobHistory.parseHistory(File path, Listener l) is changed to JobHistory.parseHistoryFromFS(String path, Listener l, FileSystem fs)


this patch makes dfs -mv more like linux mv command getting rid of unnecessary output in dfs -mv and returns an error message when moving non existent files/directories — mv: cannot stat “filename”: No such file or directory.


WARNING: No release note provided for this change.


Added a new option -ignoreCrc to fs -get, or equivalently, fs -copyToLocal, such that crc checksum will be ignored for the command. The use of this option is to download the corrupted files.


This issue introduces rack awareness for map tasks. It also moves the rack resolution logic to the central servers - NameNode & JobTracker. The administrator can specify a loadable class given by topology.node.switch.mapping.impl to specify the class implementing the logic for rack resolution. The class must implement a method - resolve(List<String> names), where names is the list of DNS-names/IP-addresses that we want resolved. The return value is a list of resolved network paths of the form /foo/rack, where rack is the rackID where the node belongs to and foo is the switch where multiple racks are connected, and so on. The default implementation of this class is packaged along with hadoop and points to org.apache.hadoop.net.ScriptBasedMapping and this class loads a script that can be used for rack resolution. The script location is configurable. It is specified by topology.script.file.name and defaults to an empty script. In the case where the script name is empty, /default-rack is returned for all dns-names/IP-addresses. The loadable topology.node.switch.mapping.impl provides administrators fleixibilty to define how their site’s node resolution should happen. For mapred, one can also specify the level of the cache w.r.t the number of levels in the resolved network path - defaults to two. This means that the JobTracker will cache tasks at the host level and at the rack level. Known issue: the task caching will not work with levels greater than 2 (beyond racks). This bug is tracked in HADOOP-3296.


Programs that implement the raw Mapper or Reducer interfaces will need modification to compile with this release. For example,

class MyMapper implements Mapper { public void map(WritableComparable key, Writable val, OutputCollector out, Reporter reporter) throws IOException { // … } // … }

will need to be changed to refer to the parameterized type. For example:

class MyMapper implements Mapper<WritableComparable, Writable, WritableComparable, Writable> { public void map(WritableComparable key, Writable val, OutputCollector<WritableComparable, Writable> out, Reporter reporter) throws IOException { // … } // … }

Similarly implementations of the following raw interfaces will need modification: InputFormat, OutputCollector, OutputFormat, Partitioner, RecordReader, RecordWriter


Reducers now perform merges of shuffle data (both in-memory and on disk) while fetching map outputs. Earlier, during shuffle they used to merge only the in-memory outputs.


Added a new fs command fs -count for counting the number of bytes, files and directories under a given path.

Added a new RPC getContentSummary(String path) to ClientProtocol.


The deprecated classes org.apache.hadoop.streaming.StreamLineRecordReader, org.apache.hadoop.streaming.StreamOutputFormat and org.apache.hadoop.streaming.StreamSequenceRecordReader are removed


The following deprecated methods are removed from org.apache.hadoop.JobConf : public Class getInputKeyClass() public void setInputKeyClass(Class theClass) public Class getInputValueClass() public void setInputValueClass(Class theClass)

The methods, public boolean org.apache.hadoop.JobConf.getSpeculativeExecution() and public void org.apache.hadoop.JobConf.setSpeculativeExecution(boolean speculativeExecution) are undeprecated.


The deprecated method public int org.apache.hadoop.mapred.ClusterStatus.getMaxTasks() is removed. The deprecated configuration property “mapred.tasktracker.tasks.maximum” is removed.


The deprecated classes org.apache.hadoop.util.ShellUtil and org.apache.hadoop.util.ToolBase are removed.


DataNode takes 50% less CPU while serving data to clients.


This patch adds a new api to file system i.e delete(path, boolean), deprecating the previous delete(path). the new api recursively deletes files only if boolean is set to true. If path is a file, the boolean value does not matter, if path is a directory and the directory is non empty delete(path, false) will throw an exception and delete(path, true) will delete all files recursively.


This feature enables specifying ulimits for streaming/pipes tasks. Now pipes and streaming tasks have same virtual memory available as the java process which invokes them. Ulimit value will be the same as -Xmx value for java processes provided using mapred.child.java.opts.


A new API DFSOututStream.flush() flushes all outstanding data to the pipeline of datanodes.


The key and value objects that are given to the Combiner and Reducer are now reused between calls. This is much more efficient, but the user can not assume the objects are constant.


Improved FSDirectory.mkdirs(…) performance. In NNThroughputBenchmark-create, the ops per sec in was improved ~54%.


Open and isDir were removed from ClientProtocol.


A unit testing framework based on pyunit is added to HOD. Developers contributing patches to HOD should now contribute unit tests along with the patches where possible.


The deprecated method, public long org.apache.hadoop.mapred.MapOutputLocation.getFile(FileSystem fileSys, Path localFilename, int reduce, Progressable pingee, int timeout) is removed.


The deprecated classes org.apache.hadoop.mapred.InputFormatBase and org.apache.hadoop.mapred.PhasedFileSystem are removed.


Change DFS block placement to allocate the first replica locally, the second off-rack, and the third intra-rack from the second.


This patch adds a new FileSystem, HftpsFileSystem, that allows access to HDFS data over HTTPS.


New FileSystem API getFileBlockLocations to return the number of bytes in each block in a file via a single rpc to the namenode to speed up job planning. Deprecates getFileCacheHints.


The mapred system directory generated by HOD is cleaned up at cluster deallocation time.


This issue restructures local job directory on the tasktracker. Users are provided with a job-specific shared directory (mapred-local/taskTracker/jobcache/$jobid/ work) for using it as scratch space, through configuration property and system property “job.local.dir”. Now, the directory “../work” is not available from the task’s cwd.


A provision to reliably detect a failing script’s exit code was added. In case the hod script option returned a non-zero exit code, users can now look for a ‘script.exitcode’ file written to the HOD cluster directory. If this file is present, it means the script failed with the returned exit code.


The following deprecated methods in org.apache.hadoop.conf.Configuration are removed. public Object getObject(String name) public void setObject(String name, Object value) public Object get(String name, Object defaultValue) public void set(String name, Object value) and public Iterator entries()


The deprecated constructor org.apache.hadoop.mapred.MiniMRCluster.MiniMRCluster(int jobTrackerPort, int taskTrackerPort, int numTaskTrackers, String namenode, boolean taskTrackerFirst) is removed.


The deprecated methods in org.apache.hadoop.record.compiler.generated.SimpleCharStream : public int getColumn() and public int getLine() are removed


If the first character on a line is the separator, empty key is assumed, and the whole line is the value (due to a bug this was not the case).


This patch allows new command line options for

hadoop jar which are

hadoop jar -files <comma seperated list of files> -libjars <comma seperated list of jars> -archives <comma seperated list of archives>

-files options allows you to speficy comma seperated list of path which would be present in your current working directory of your task -libjars option allows you to add jars to the classpaths of the maps and reduces. -archives allows you to pass archives as arguments that are unzipped/unjarred and a link with name of the jar/zip are created in the current working directory if tasks.


This removes many inefficiencies in task placement and scheduling logic. The JobTracker would perform linear scans of the list of submitted tasks in cases where it did not find an obvious candidate task for a node. With better data structures for managing job state, all task placement operations now run in constant time (in most cases). Also, the task output promotions are batched.


hadoop dfs -put accepts multiple sources when destination is a directory.


SocketOutputStream.close() closes the underlying channel. Increase compatibility with java.net.Socket.getOutputStream. User Impact : none.


The number of free nodes in the cluster is computed using a better algorithm that filters out inconsistencies in node status as reported by Torque.


The parameter boolean taskTrackerFirst is removed from org.apache.hadoop.mapred.MiniMRCluster constructors. Thus signature of following APIs public MiniMRCluster(int jobTrackerPort, int taskTrackerPort, int numTaskTrackers, String namenode, boolean taskTrackerFirst, int numDir) public MiniMRCluster(int jobTrackerPort, int taskTrackerPort, int numTaskTrackers, String namenode, boolean taskTrackerFirst, int numDir, String[] racks) public MiniMRCluster(int jobTrackerPort, int taskTrackerPort, int numTaskTrackers, String namenode, boolean taskTrackerFirst, int numDir, String[] racks, String[] hosts) public MiniMRCluster(int jobTrackerPort, int taskTrackerPort, int numTaskTrackers, String namenode, boolean taskTrackerFirst, int numDir, String[] racks, String[] hosts, UnixUserGroupInformation ugi ) is changed to public MiniMRCluster(int jobTrackerPort, int taskTrackerPort, int numTaskTrackers, String namenode, int numDir) public MiniMRCluster(int jobTrackerPort, int taskTrackerPort, int numTaskTrackers, String namenode, int numDir, String[] racks) public MiniMRCluster(int jobTrackerPort, int taskTrackerPort, int numTaskTrackers, String namenode, int numDir, String[] racks, String[] hosts) public MiniMRCluster(int jobTrackerPort, int taskTrackerPort, int numTaskTrackers, String namenode, int numDir, String[] racks, String[] hosts, UnixUserGroupInformation ugi ) respectively. Since the old signatures were not deprecated, any code using the old constructors must be changed to use the new constructors.


This issue provides users the ability to specify what paths to ignore for processing in the job input directory (apart from the filenames that start with “_” and “.”). Defines two new APIs - FileInputFormat.setInputPathFilter(JobConf, PathFilter), and, FileInputFormat.getInputPathFilter(JobConf).


Removes deprecated method Server.getUserInfo()


Removes deprecated method FileSystem#listPaths()


Changes were made to handle relative paths correctly for important HOD options such as the cluster directory, tarball option, and script file.


The deprecated methods public String org.apache.hadoop.mapred.Counters.getDisplayName(String counter) and public synchronized Collection<String> org.apache.hadoop.mapred.Counters.getCounterNames() are removed. The deprecated method public synchronized long org.apache.hadoop.mapred.Counters.getCounter(String counterName) is undeprecated.


Removes deprecated method INode#getAbsoluteName()


The stdout and stderr streams of daemons are redirected to files that are created under the hadoop log directory. Users can now send kill 3 signals to the daemons to get stack traces and thread dumps for debugging.


Build script was changed to make HOD versions follow Hadoop version numbers. As a result of this change, the next version of HOD would not be 0.5, but would be synchronized to the Hadoop version number. Users who rely on the version number of HOD should note the unexpected jump in version numbers.


The following public APIs are added in org.apache.hadoop.conf.Configuration String[] Configuration.getStrings(String name, String… defaultValue) and void Configuration.setStrings(String name, String… values)


Removes deprecated API FileSystem#globPaths()


New environment variables were introduced to allow finer grained control of Java options passed to server and client JVMs. See the new *_OPTS variables in conf/hadoop-env.sh.


Deprecates exists() from ClientProtocol


Added a new option -p to distcp for preserving file/directory status. -p[rbugp] Preserve status r: replication number b: block size u: user g: group p: permission -p alone is equivalent to -prbugp


Adds new framework map/reduce counters that track the number of bytes read and written to HDFS, local, KFS, and S3 file systems.


A new Interface and a default implementation to convert and restore serializations of objects to strings.


The command “hadoop-ec2 run” has been replaced by “hadoop-ec2 launch-cluster <group> <number of instances>”, and “hadoop-ec2 start-hadoop” has been removed since Hadoop is started on instance start up. See https://wiki.apache.org/hadoop/AmazonEC2 for details.


The deprecated methods, public File org.apache.hadoop.mapred.FileSplit.getFile() and public static long org.apache.hadoop.mapred.LineRecordReader.readLine(InputStream in, OutputStream out) are removed. The constructor org.apache.hadoop.mapred.LineRecordReader.LineReader(InputStream in, Configuration conf) ’s visibility is made public. The signature of the public org.apache.hadoop.streaming.UTF8ByteArrayUtils.readLIne(InputStream) method is changed to UTF8ByteArrayUtils.readLIne(LineReader, Text). Since the old signature is not deprecated, any code using the old method must be changed to use the new method.


Tasks that don’t generate any output are not inserted in the commit queue of the JobTracker. They are marked as SUCCESSFUL by the TaskTracker and the JobTracker updates their state short-circuiting the commit queue.


  1. Deprecates JobConf.setOutputPath and JobConf.getOutputPath JobConf.getOutputPath() still returns the same value that it used to return.
  2. Deprecates OutputFormatBase. Adds FileOutputFormat. Existing output formats extending OutputFormatBase, now extend FileOutputFormat.
  3. Adds the following APIs in FileOutputFormat : public static void setOutputPath(JobConf conf, Path outputDir); // sets mapred.output.dir public static Path getOutputPath(JobConf conf) ; // gets mapred.output.dir public static Path getWorkOutputPath(JobConf conf); // gets mapred.work.output.dir
  4. static void setWorkOutputPath(JobConf conf, Path outputDir) is also added to FileOutputFormat. This is used by the framework to set mapred.work.output.dir as task’s temporary output dir .

Decreases the frequency of logging from streaming from every 100 records to every 10,000 records.


Add a static method MapFile#setIndexInterval(Configuration, int interval) so that MapReduce jobs that use MapFileOutputFormat can set the index interval.


Minor typo fix in help message for chmod. impact : none.


Fixes LocalFSMerger in ReduceTask.java to handle errors/exceptions better. Prior to this all exceptions except IOException would be silently ignored.


getFileInfo returns null for File not found instead of throwing FileNotFoundException


The public methods org.apache.hadoop.mapred.JobConf.setInputPath(Path) and org.apache.hadoop.mapred.JobConf.addInputPath(Path) are deprecated. And the methods have the semantics of branch 0.16. The following public APIs are added in org.apache.hadoop.mapred.FileInputFormat : public static void setInputPaths(JobConf job, Path… paths); public static void setInputPaths(JobConf job, String commaSeparatedPaths); public static void addInputPath(JobConf job, Path path); public static void addInputPaths(JobConf job, String commaSeparatedPaths); Earlier code calling JobConf.setInputPath(Path), JobConf.addInputPath(Path) should now call FileInputFormat.setInputPaths(JobConf, Path…) and FileInputFormat.addInputPath(Path) respectively


Makes DataNode socket write timeout configurable. User impact : none.


Moved HOD change items from CHANGES.txt to a new file src/contrib/hod/CHANGES.txt.


This patch adds the mapred.child.ulimit to limit the virtual memory for children processes to the given value.


Fixed a memory leak associated with ‘abandoned’ files (i.e. not cleanly closed). This held up significant amounts of memory depending on activity and how long NameNode has been running.