[IMPALA-4141] Error when creating a partition that already exists in HMS

• Type: Improvement
• Status: Resolved
• Priority: Major
• Resolution: Fixed
• Affects Version/s: Impala 2.7.0
• Fix Version/s: Impala 2.9.0
• Component/s: Catalog
• Labels: catalog-server usability
• Target Version: Impala 2.9.0
• Assignee: Attila Jeges
• Reporter: Dimitris Tsirogiannis
• Created: 15/Sep/16 21:35
• Updated: 13/Feb/17 21:13
• Resolved: 13/Feb/17 21:13

Description

Trying to add a partition which already exists in HMS but not in catalog throws an IllegalArgumentException. Steps to reproduce:

impala> create table foo (a int) partitioned by (x int);
impala> describe foo; <-- trigger a metadata load
hive> alter table foo add partition (x = 1);
impala> alter table foo add if not exists partition (x = 1);
ERROR:
IllegalArgumentException: Can not create a Path from a null string

From the catalog.INFO we get the following stacktrace:

I0915 14:22:00.215077  3710 jni-util.cc:169] java.lang.IllegalArgumentException: Can not create a Path from a null string
       	at org.apache.hadoop.fs.Path.checkPathArg(Path.java:123)
       	at org.apache.hadoop.fs.Path.<init>(Path.java:135)
       	at com.cloudera.impala.catalog.HdfsTable.createPartition(HdfsTable.java:837)
       	at com.cloudera.impala.catalog.HdfsTable.createPartition(HdfsTable.java:792)
       	at com.cloudera.impala.service.CatalogOpExecutor.addHdfsPartition(CatalogOpExecutor.java:508)
       	at com.cloudera.impala.service.CatalogOpExecutor.alterTableAddPartition(CatalogOpExecutor.java:1707)
       	at com.cloudera.impala.service.CatalogOpExecutor.alterTable(CatalogOpExecutor.java:373)
       	at com.cloudera.impala.service.CatalogOpExecutor.execDdlRequest(CatalogOpExecutor.java:239)
       	at com.cloudera.impala.service.JniCatalog.execDdl(JniCatalog.java:137)