Add the following to ~/.bash_profile:

export HIVE_HOME=/home/hduser/apache-hive-1.2.1-bin
export PATH=$PATH:$HIVE_HOME/bin

Here, hduser is the name of user with which you have logged in and Hive-1.2.1 is the Hive directory extracted from the tar file.
Run Hive from a terminal:

hive

Make sure that the Hive node has a connection to Hadoop cluster, which means Hive would be installed on any of the Hadoop nodes, or Hadoop configurations are available in the node's class path.

This installation uses the embedded Derby database and stores the data on the local filesystem. Only one Hive session can be open on the node.

If different users try to run the Hive shell, the second would get the Failed to start database 'metastore_db' error.

Run Hive queries for the datastore to test the installation:

hive> SHOW TABLES;
hive> CREATE TABLE sales(id INT, product String, age INT) ROW FORMAT DELIMITED FIELDS TERMINATED BY '\t';

Logs are generated per user bases in the /tmp/<usrename> folder.

Add following to ~/.bash_profile:

export HIVE_HOME=/home/hduser/apache-hive-1.2.1-bin
export PATH=$PATH:$HIVE_HOME/bin

Here, hduser is the user name, and apache-hive-1.2.1-bin is the Hive directory extracted from the tar file.

Install a SQL database such as MySQL on the same machine where you want to run Hive.

For the Ubuntu, MySQL could be installed by running the following command on the node's terminal:

sudo apt-get install mysql-server

In case of MySql, Hive needs the mysql-connector jar. Download the latest mysql-connector jar from http://dev.mysql.com/get/Downloads/Connector-J/mysql-connector-java-5.1.35.tar.gz and copy it to the lib folder of your Hive home directory.

Create a file, hive-site.xml, in the conf folder of Hive and add the following entries to it:

<configuration>
<property>
<name>javax.jdo.option.ConnectionURL</name>
<value>jdbc:mysql://localhost:3306/metastore_db?createDatabaseIfNotExist=true</value>
<description>metadata is stored in a MySQL server</description>
</property>
<property>
<name>javax.jdo.option.ConnectionDriverName</name>
<value>com.mysql.jdbc.Driver</value>
<description>MySQL JDBC driver class</description>
</property>
<property>
<name>javax.jdo.option.ConnectionUserName</name>
<value>hduser</value>
<description>user name for connecting to mysql server     
</description>
</property>
<property>
<name>javax.jdo.option.ConnectionPassword</name>
<value>passwd</value>
<description>password for connecting to mysql server</description>
</property>
</configuration>

Run Hive from the terminal:

hive

Download the latest version of Hive from http://a.mbbsindia.com/hive/hive-1.2.1/apache-hive-1.2.1-bin.tar.gz.

Extract the package:

tar –xzvf apache-hive-1.2.1-bin.tar.gz

Add the following to ~/.bash_profile:

sudo nano ~/.bash_profile
export HIVE_HOME=/home/hduser/apache-hive-1.2.1-bin
export PATH=$PATH:$HIVE_HOME/bin

Here, hduser is the user name and apache-hive-1.2.1-bin is the Hive directory extracted from the tar file.

Install a SQL database such as MySQL on a remote machine to be used for the metastore.

For Ubuntu, MySQL can be installed with the following command:

sudo apt-get install mysql-server

In the case of MySQL, Hive needs the mysql-connector jar file. Download the latest mysql-connector jar from http://dev.mysql.com/get/Downloads/Connector-J/mysql-connector-java-5.1.35.tar.gz and copy it to the lib folder of your Hive home directory.

Add the following entries to hive-site.xml:

<configuration>
<property>
<name>javax.jdo.option.ConnectionURL</name>
<value>jdbc:mysql://<ip_of_remote_host>:3306/metastore_db?createDatabaseIfNotExist=true</value>
<description>metadata is stored in a MySQL server</description>
</property>
<property>
<name>javax.jdo.option.ConnectionDriverName</name>
<value>com.mysql.jdbc.Driver</value><description>MySQL JDBC driver class</description>
</property>
<property>
<name>javax.jdo.option.ConnectionUserName</name>
<value>hduser</value>
<description>user name for connecting to mysql server     
</description>
</property>
<property>
<name>javax.jdo.option.ConnectionPassword</name>
<value>passwd</value>
<description>password for connecting to mysql server</description>
</property>
</configuration>

Start the Hive metastore interface:

bin/hive --service metastore &

Run Hive from the terminal:

hive

The Hive metastore interface by default listens at port 9083:

netstat -an | grep 9083

Start the Hive shell and make sure that the Hive Data Definition Language and Data Manipulation Language (DDL or DML) operations are working by creating tables in Hive.