Modifying Impala Startup Options

The configuration options for the Impala daemons let you choose which hosts and ports to use for the services that run on a single host, specify directories for logging, control resource usage and security, and specify other aspects of the Impala software.

Configuring Impala Startup Options through the Command Line

The Impala server, statestore, and catalog services start up using values provided in a defaults file, /etc/default/impala.

This file includes information about many resources used by Impala. Most of the defaults included in this file should be effective in most cases. For example, typically you would not change the definition of the CLASSPATH variable, but you would always set the address used by the statestore server. Some of the content you might modify includes:

IMPALA_STATE_STORE_HOST=127.0.0.1
IMPALA_STATE_STORE_PORT=24000
IMPALA_BACKEND_PORT=22000
IMPALA_LOG_DIR=/var/log/impala
IMPALA_CATALOG_SERVICE_HOST=...
IMPALA_STATE_STORE_HOST=...

export IMPALA_STATE_STORE_ARGS=${IMPALA_STATE_STORE_ARGS:- \
    -log_dir=${IMPALA_LOG_DIR} -state_store_port=${IMPALA_STATE_STORE_PORT}}
IMPALA_SERVER_ARGS=" \
-log_dir=${IMPALA_LOG_DIR} \
-catalog_service_host=${IMPALA_CATALOG_SERVICE_HOST} \
-state_store_port=${IMPALA_STATE_STORE_PORT} \
-state_store_host=${IMPALA_STATE_STORE_HOST} \
-be_port=${IMPALA_BACKEND_PORT}"
export ENABLE_CORE_DUMPS=${ENABLE_COREDUMPS:-false}

To use alternate values, edit the defaults file, then restart all the Impala-related services so that the changes take effect. Restart the Impala server using the following commands:

$ sudo service impala-server restart
Stopping Impala Server:                                    [  OK  ]
Starting Impala Server:                                    [  OK  ]

Restart the Impala StateStore using the following commands:

$ sudo service impala-state-store restart
Stopping Impala State Store Server:                        [  OK  ]
Starting Impala State Store Server:                        [  OK  ]

Restart the Impala Catalog Service using the following commands:

$ sudo service impala-catalog restart
Stopping Impala Catalog Server:                            [  OK  ]
Starting Impala Catalog Server:                            [  OK  ]

Some common settings to change include:

Note:

These startup options for the impalad daemon are different from the command-line options for the impala-shell command. For the impala-shell options, see impala-shell Configuration Options.

Checking the Values of Impala Configuration Options

You can check the current runtime value of all these settings through the Impala web interface, available by default at http://impala_hostname:25000/varz for the impalad daemon, http://impala_hostname:25010/varz for the statestored daemon, or http://impala_hostname:25020/varz for the catalogd daemon.

Startup Options for catalogd Daemon

The catalogd daemon implements the Impala Catalog service, which broadcasts metadata changes to all the Impala nodes when Impala creates a table, inserts data, or performs other kinds of DDL and DML operations.

Use ‑‑load_catalog_in_background option to control when the metadata of a table is loaded.
  • If set to false, the metadata of a table is loaded when it is referenced for the first time. This means that the first run of a particular query can be slower than subsequent runs. Starting in Impala 2.2, the default for ‑‑load_catalog_in_background is false.
  • If set to true, the catalog service attempts to load metadata for a table even if no query needed that metadata. So metadata will possibly be already loaded when the first query that would need it is run. However, for the following reasons, we recommend not to set the option to true.
    • Background load can interfere with query-specific metadata loading. This can happen on startup or after invalidating metadata, with a duration depending on the amount of metadata, and can lead to a seemingly random long running queries that are difficult to diagnose.
    • Impala may load metadata for tables that are possibly never used, potentially increasing catalog size and consequently memory usage for both catalog service and Impala Daemon.