About the Installation and Configuration Directories

This documentation uses <PXF_INSTALL_DIR> to refer to the PXF installation directory. Its value depends on how you have installed PXF:

• If you installed PXF as part of Greenplum Database, its value is $GPHOME/pxf.
• If you installed the PXF rpm or deb package, its value is /usr/local/pxf-gp<greenplum-major-version>, or the directory of your choosing (CentOS/RHEL only).

<PXF_INSTALL_DIR> includes both the PXF executables and the PXF runtime configuration files and directories. In PXF 5.x, you needed to specify a $PXF_CONF directory for the runtime configuration when you initialized PXF. In PXF 6.x, however, no initialization is required: $PXF_BASE now identifies the runtime configuration directory, and the default $PXF_BASE is <PXF_INSTALL_DIR>.

If you want to store your configuration and runtime files in a different location, see Relocating $PXF_BASE.

Note: This documentation uses <PXF_INSTALL_DIR> to reference the PXF installation directory. This documentation uses the $PXF_BASE environment variable to reference the PXF runtime configuration directory. PXF uses the variable internally. It only needs to be set in your shell environment if you explicitly relocate the directory.

PXF Installation Directories

The following PXF files and directories are installed to <PXF_INSTALL_DIR> when you install Greenplum Database or the PXF 6.x rpm or deb package:

Directory	Description
application/	The PXF Server application JAR file.
bin/	The PXF command line executable directory.
commit.sha	The commit identifier for this PXF release.
gpextable/	The PXF extension files. PXF copies the pxf.control file from this directory to the Greenplum installation ($GPHOME) on a single host when you run the pxf register command, or on all hosts in the cluster when you run the pxf [cluster] register command from the Greenplum coordinator host.
share/	The directory for shared PXF files that you may require depending on the external data stores that you access. share/ initially includes only the PXF HBase JAR file.
templates/	The PXF directory for server configuration file templates.
version	The PXF version.

The following PXF directories are installed to $PXF_BASE when you install Greenplum Database or the PXF 6.x rpm or deb package:

Directory	Description
conf/	The location of user-customizable PXF configuration files for PXF runtime and logging configuration settings. This directory contains the pxf-application.properties, pxf-env.sh, pxf-log4j2.xml, and pxf-profiles.xml files.
keytabs/	The default location of the PXF Service Kerberos principal keytab file. The keytabs/ directory and contained files are readable only by the Greenplum Database installation user, typically gpadmin.
lib/	The location of user-added runtime dependencies. The native/ subdirectory is the default PXF runtime directory for native libraries.
logs/	The PXF runtime log file directory. The logs/ directory and log files are readable only by the Greenplum Database installation user, typically gpadmin.
run/	The default PXF run directory. After starting PXF, this directory contains a PXF process id file, pxf-app.pid. run/ and contained files and directories are readable only by the Greenplum Database installation user, typically gpadmin.
servers/	The configuration directory for PXF servers; each subdirectory contains a server definition, and the name of the subdirectory identifies the name of the server. The default server is named default. The Greenplum Database administrator may configure other servers.

Refer to Configuring PXF and Starting PXF for detailed information about the PXF configuration and startup commands and procedures.

Relocating $PXF_BASE

If you require that $PXF_BASE reside in a directory distinct from <PXF_INSTALL_DIR>, you can change it from the default location to a location of your choosing after you install PXF 6.x.

PXF provides the pxf [cluster] prepare command to prepare a new $PXF_BASE location. The command copies the runtime and configuration directories identified above to the file system location that you specify in a PXF_BASE environment variable.

For example, to relocate $PXF_BASE to the /path/to/dir directory on all Greenplum hosts, run the command as follows:

gpadmin@coordinator$ PXF_BASE=/path/to/dir pxf cluster prepare

When your $PXF_BASE is different than <PXF_INSTALL_DIR>, inform PXF by setting the PXF_BASE environment variable when you run a pxf command:

gpadmin@coordinator$ PXF_BASE=/path/to/dir pxf cluster start

Set the environment variable in the .bashrc shell initialization script for the PXF installation owner (typically the gpadmin user) as follows:

export PXF_BASE=/path/to/dir