Troubleshooting Hive
This section provides guidance on problems you may encounter while installing, upgrading, or running Hive.
Hive Queries Fail with "Too many counters" Error
Explanation
Hive operations use various counters while executing MapReduce jobs. These per-operator counters are enabled by the configuration setting hive.task.progress. This is disabled by default; if it is enabled, Hive may create a large number of counters (4 counters per operator, plus another 20).
By default, CDH restricts the number of MapReduce counters to 120. Hive queries that require more counters will fail with the "Too many counters" error.