Hue with LDAP not working for some users (WebHdfsException at /)

Question

Following the mapr hadoop docs for setting up hue with LDAP (direct bind, active directory method), restarting the services, and attempting to log into hue, some users get the following `Django error:

WebHdfsException at /
IOException: Error getting user info for current user, <someusername>(error 500)
Request Method: GET
Request URL:    https://mapr004.myorg.local:8888/
Django Version: 1.6.10
Exception Type: WebHdfsException
Exception Value:    
IOException: Error getting user info for current user, <someusername>(error 500)
Exception Location: /opt/mapr/hue/hue-3.12.0/desktop/libs/hadoop/src/hadoop/fs/webhdfs.py in _stats, line 265
Python Executable:  /opt/mapr/hue/hue-3.12.0/build/env/bin/python2.7
Python Version: 2.7.13

while others can log in fine. What is happening here and what can be done to fix this? Thanks.

Answer 1

Seem to have fixed it.

Looking into the error message WebHDFSException and looking at other problems that raise this error, it seems like the problem is that Hue using LDAP looks for an existing user on the cluster (ie. a user in the cluster with the same name across all nodes (should have same uid and gid as well?)) and checks that there is such a 'cluster-user' who's name matches the name being used to login using the Hue LDAP auth.

Thus, I created a user myname (same name as my active directory name) across all nodes. After doing this, I was able to login to Hue using LDAP with my AD credentials.