FAILED: Error in metadata: java.lang.RuntimeException: Unable to instantiate org.apache.hadoop.hive.metastore.HiveMetaStoreClient

I have resolved the problem. These are the steps I followed:

1. Go to $HIVE_HOME/bin/metastore_db
2. Copied the db.lck to db.lck1 and dbex.lck to dbex.lck1
3. Deleted the lock entries from db.lck and dbex.lck
4. Log out from hive shell as well as from all running instances of HDFS
5. Re-login to HDFS and hive shell. If you run DDL commands, it may again give you the "Could not instantiate HiveMetaStoreClient error"
6. Now copy back the db.lck1 to db.lck and dbex.lck1 to dbex.lck
7. Log out from all hive shell and HDFS instances
8. Relogin and you should see your old tables

Note: Step 5 may seem a little weird because even after deleting the lock entry, it will still give the HiveMetaStoreClient error but it worked for me.

Advantage: You don't have to duplicate the effort of re-creating the entire database.

Hope this helps somebody facing the same error. Please vote if you find useful. Thanks ahead

I was told that generally we get this exception if we the hive console not terminated properly. The fix:

Run the jps command, look for "RunJar" process and kill it using kill -9 command

See: getting error in hive

Have you copied the jar containing the JDBC driver for your metadata db into Hive's lib dir?

For instance, if you're using MySQL to hold your metadata db, you wll need to copy

mysql-connector-java-5.1.22-bin.jar into $HIVE_HOME/lib.

This fixed that same error for me.