[HBASE-24286] HMaster won't become healthy after after cloning or creating a new cluster pointing at the same file system

• Type: Bug
• Status: Resolved
• Priority: Major
• Resolution: Won't Fix
• Affects Version/s: 3.0.0-alpha-1, 2.2.3, 2.2.4, 2.2.5
• Component/s: master, Region Assignment
• Assignee: Tak-Lon (Stephen) Wu
• Reporter: Jack Ye
• Created: 29/Apr/20 17:20
• Updated: 08/Sep/22 18:06
• Resolved: 08/Sep/22 18:06

Description

How to reproduce:

1. user starts an HBase cluster on top of a file system
2. user performs some operations and shuts down the cluster, all the data are still persisted in the file system
3. user creates a new HBase cluster using a different set of servers on top of the same file system with the same root directory
4. HMaster cannot initialize

Root cause:

During HMaster initialization phase, the following happens:

1. HMaster waits for namespace table online
2. AssignmentManager gets all namespace table regions info
3. region servers of namespace table are already dead, online check fails
4. HMaster waits for namespace regions online, keep retrying for 1000 times which means forever

Code waiting for namespace table to be online: https://github.com/apache/hbase/blob/rel/2.2.3/hbase-server/src/main/java/org/apache/hadoop/hbase/master/HMaster.java#L1102

Stack trace (running on S3):

2020-04-23 08:15:57,185 WARN [master/ip-10-12-13-14:16000:becomeActiveMaster] master.HMaster: hbase:namespace,,1587628169070.d34b65b91a52644ed3e77c5fbb065c2b. is NOT online; state={d34b65b91a52644ed3e77c5fbb065c2b state=OPEN, ts=1587629742129, server=ip-10-12-13-14.ec2.internal,16020,1587628031614}; ServerCrashProcedures=false. Master startup cannot progress, in holding-pattern until region onlined.

where ip-10-12-13-14.ec2.internal is the old region server hosting the region of hbase:namespace.

Discussion for the fix

We see there is a fix for this at branch-3: https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/HBASE-21154. Before we provide a patch, we would like to know from the community if we should backport this change to branch-2, or if we should just perform a fix with minimum code change.

Issue Links

• is blocked by: HBASE-24833 Bootstrap should not delete the META table directory if it's not partial
• relates to: HBASE-27044 Serialized procedures which point to users from other Kerberos domains can prevent master startup
• relates to: HBASE-25587 [hbck2] Schedule SCP for all unknown servers
• relates to: HBASE-26193 Do not store meta region location as permanent state on zookeeper
• links to: GitHub Pull Request #2113
• links to: GitHub Pull Request #2114