1. Problem

We wrote a shell script to uninstall Cloudera Manager(CM) that run in a cluster with 3 linux server. After run the script, we reinstalled the CM normally. But when we established Hdfs encountered a problem: **failed to format NameNode. Cannot find CDH's bigtop-detect-javahome. **

2.Thinking

1. By google we found if it caused by the exist of floder "/dfs", but after used command rm -rf /dfs the problem still happen.
2. We found the error reported: /usr/libexec/bigtop-detect-javahome, so we thought if caused by JAVA_HOME variable exception. At first, we disable the file: /etc/profile's JAAVA_HOME variable. To make the change effect, we shouldsource /etc/profile
   and disconnect the xshell. however, the problem still happen.
3. Recheck the uninstall script, we found the script delete files: /usr/bin/hadoop* which was important. now /etc/profile as follow:

#export JAVA_HOME=/usr/java/jdk1.7.0_67-cloudera
#export PATH=$JAVA_HOME/bin:$PATH
#export CLASSPATH=.:$JAVA_HOME/lib/dt.jar:$JAVA_HOME/lib/tools.jar
 

3. Slove

follwing step you should do in each server of the cluster.

3.1 Check file hadoop avaliable

cd to the floder /usr/bin and check if file hadoopis avaliable. the content of file as follows:

#!/bin/bash
# Autodetect JAVA_HOME if not defined
. /usr/lib/bigtop-utils/bigtop-detect-javahome
export HADOOP_HOME=/usr/lib/hadoop
export HADOOP_MAPRED_HOME=/usr/lib/hadoop
export HADOOP_LIBEXEC_DIR=//usr/lib/hadoop/libexec
export HADOOP_CONF_DIR=/etc/hadoop/conf
exec /usr/lib/hadoop/bin/hadoop "[email protected]"

we found it load file bigtop-detect-javahome and set HADOOP_HOME. It's a pity that /usr/lib/hadoop* and /usr/lib/hadoop* was delete by our uninstall script, so we copied those file and floder from another cluster to our cluster.

3.2 Check file bigtop-detect-javahome avaliable

cd to the floder /usr/lib/bigtop-utils and check if filebigtop-detect-javahome is avaliable, the content of file as follows:

# attempt to find java
if [ -z "${JAVA_HOME}" ]; then
    for candidate_regex in ${JAVA_HOME_CANDIDATES[@]}; do
        for candidate in `ls -rvd ${candidate_regex}* 2>/dev/null`; do
            if [ -e ${candidate}/bin/java ]; then
                export JAVA_HOME=${candidate}
                break 2
            fi
        done
    done
fi

the file is used to set JAVA_HOME variable when system doesn't define JAVA_HOME in /etc/profile. Finally, I found no matter the file /etc/profile with JAVA_HOME variable or without it, Hdfs can be installed.

3.3 More and more

Go through the first two steps can slove the problem, but more google let me know /etc/default/ is real config floder ! refer: http://blog.sina.com.cn/s/blog_5d9aca630101pxr1.html addexport JAVA_HOME=path into /etc/default/bigtop-utils, then source /etc/default/bigtop-utils. You only need to do it once and all CDH components would use that variable to figure out where JDK is.

4. Conclusion

1. Always focus on the log file content and error's relation is.
2. Make the best use of your time and modest ask for advise to other. otherwise, the problem always exists.