You might encounter a runtime exception similar to the following:

Exception in thread "main" java.lang.IllegalAccessError: class com.google. protobuf.HBaseZeroCopyByteString cannot access its superclass com.google. protobuf.LiteralByteString
     at java.lang.ClassLoader.defineClass1(Native Method)
     at java.lang.ClassLoader.defineClass(ClassLoader.java:800)
     at java.security.SecureClassLoader.defineClass(SecureClassLoader. java:142)

To resolve this issue, place hbase-protocol*.jar immediately after hbase-site.xml in the HADOOP_CLASSPATH environment variable:

HADOOP_CLASSPATH=/path/to/hbase-site.xml:/path/to/hbase-protocol.jar