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- When "hive.warehouse.subdir.inherit.perms" flag is enabled in Hive, Hive will try to do all the following inheritances.
- Database directory inherits from warehouse directory.
- Table directory inherits from database directory, or from warehouse directory if it is part of the default database.
- External table directory inherits from parent directory.
- Partition directory inherits from table directory. (As of Hive 1.1.0.15.)
- Data files inherit from table or partition directory.
- Failure by Hive to inherit will not cause operation to fail. Rule of thumb of when security-prop inheritance will happen is the following:
- To run chmod, a user must be the owner of the file, or else a super-user.
- To run chgrp, a user must be the owner of files, or else a super-user.
- Hence, user that hive runs as (either 'hive' or the logged-in user in case of impersonation), must be super-user or owner of the file whose security properties are going to be changed
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See umbrella JIRA HIVE-6892 for details.
hive.warehouse.subdir.inherit.perms was removed in Hive 3.0.0. The feature is no longer needed in Hive as the traditional permission model has largely been replaced by external security systems such as Ranger and Sentry. A user may choose SQLStdAuth which ships with Hive if user doesn't want to use an external security system.