Check permission in HDFS - hadoop

Question

I'm totally new in Hadoop. One of SAS users has problem to save a file from SAS Enterprise Guide to Hadoop and I've been asked to check permissions in HDFS that if they have been granted properly. Somehow to make sure users are allowed to move from one side and to add it to the other side.
Where should I check for it on SAS servers? If it is a file or how can I check it?
Your answer with details would be more appreciated.
Thanks.

Answer 1

This question is to vague, but I can offer a few suggestions. First off, the SAS Enterprise Guide user should have a resulting SAS log from his job with any errors.
The Hadoop cluster distribution, version, services being used (For example Knox, Sentry, or Ranger security products must be setup), and authentication (kerberos) all make a difference. I will assume you are not having kerberos issues nor are running Knox, Sentry, Ranger ect, and you are using core hadoop with no Kerberos. If you need help with those you must be more specific.
1. You have to check permissions on the hadoop side for this. You have to know where they are putting the data into hadoop. These are paths in HDFS, not the servers file system.
If connecting to hive, and not specifying any options it is likely /user/hive/warehouse, or /user/username folder.
2 - Hadoop Stickybit enabled by default prevents users from writing to /tmp in HDFS. Some SAS Programs write to /tmp folder in hdfs to save metadata, along with other information.
Run the following command on a Hadoop node to check basic permissions in HDFS.
hadoop fs -ls /
You should see the /tmp folder along with permissions, if the /tmp folder has a "t" at the end the sticky bit is set such as drwxrwxrwt. If the permissions are drwxrwxrwx then sticky bit isn't set, which is good to eliminate permissions issues.
If you have a sticky bit set on /tmp, which is usually by default then you must either remote it, or set an HDFS TEMP directory in the SAS Programs libname for Hadoop cluster.
Please see the following SAS/Access to Hadoop Guide about the libname options at SAS/ACCESS® 9.4 for Relational Databases: Reference, Ninth Edition | LIBNAME Statement Specifics for Hadoop
To remove/change the Hadoop sticky bit see the following article, or from your Hadoop vendor. Configuring Hadoop Security in CDH 5 Step 14: Set the Sticky Bit on HDFS Directories . You will want to do the opposite of this article to remove the stickybit though.
2 - SAS + Authentication + Users -
If your Hadoop cluster is secured using Kerberos then each SAS user much have a valid kerberos ticket to talk to any Hadoop service. There are a number of guides on the SAS Hadoop Support page about Kerberos along with other resources. With kerberos they need a kerberos ticket, not a username or password.
SAS 9.4 Support For Hadoop Reference
If you are not using kerberos then you can either have either the Hadoop default of no authentication, or possibly some services such as Hive could have LDAP enabled.
If you don't have LDAP enabled then you can use any Hadoop username in the libname statement to connect such as hive, hdfs, or yarn. You do not need to enter any password, and this user doesn't have to be the SAS User Account. This is because they default Hadoop configuration does not require authentication. You can use another account such as one you might create for the SAS User in your Hadoop cluster. If you do this you must create a /user/username folder in HDFS by running something like the following as the HDFS superuser, or one with permissions in Hadoop then set the ownership to the user.
hadoop fs -mkdir /user/sasdemo
hadoop fs -chown sasdemo:sasusers /user/sasdemo
Then you can check to make sure it exists with
hadoop fs -ls /user/
Basically whichever user they have in their libname statement in their SAS program must have a users home folder in hadoop. The Hadoop users will have one created by default on install but you will need to create them for any additional users.
If you are using LDAP with Hadoop (not to common from what I've seen) then you will have to have the LDAP username along with a password for the user account in the libname statement. I believe you can encode the password if you like.
Testing Connections to Hadoop from SAS Program
You can modify the following SAS code to do a basic test to put one of the sashelp datasets into Hadoop using a serial connection to HiveServer2 using SAS Enterprise Guide. This is only a very basic test but should prove you can write to Hadoop.
libname myhive hadoop server=hiveserver.example.com port=10000 schema=default user=hive;
data myhive.cars;set sashelp.cars;run;
Then if you want you can use the Hadoop client of your choice to find the data in Hadoop in the location you stored it, likely /user/hive/warehouse.
hadoop fs -ls /user/hive/warehouse
And/Or you should be able to run a proc contents in SAS Enterprise Guide to display the contents of the Hadoop Hive table you just put into Hadoop.
PROC CONTENTS DATA=myhive.cars;run;
Hope this helps, good luck!

Answer 2

To find the proper groups who can access files in the HDFS, we need to check the Sentry.
The file ACL's are described in the Sentry, so if you want to give/revoke access to anyone, it can be done through it.
On the left hand side is the file location and right hand side is the ACL's of the groups.