[HADOOP-8970] Need a different environment variable or configuration that states where local temporary files are stored than hadoop.tmp.dir

• Type: Improvement
• Status: Open
• Priority: Major
• Resolution: Unresolved
• Component/s: conf
• Assignee: Unassigned
• Reporter: Robert Justice
• Created: 24/Oct/12 12:23
• Updated: 12/May/17 09:43

Description

I'm finding that hadoop.tmp.dir is used for a base directory in configuration of working directories for many other hadoop sub components (mapred, hdfs, hue, etc) and that it directs where the Hadoop client stores some local temporary files, as well as temporary files on HDFS.

Users may be dealing with tight space in /tmp. In order to move where job setup files, hive, hue files, etc, are locally stored, they have to create a new directory on HDFS (i.e. /temp) and local directories on another filesystem and make sure permissions are setup properly in HDFS and for the local filesystem across all the nodes across the cluster.

I'm wondering if it would be better to have a hadoop.local.tmp.dir that is configurable at the client level to say where local files are kept, and break that out from hadoop.tmp.dir? Know this is a major change, but thought I would suggest it.