Listing Hive metastore tables in Catalog Explorer failing with error getting schemas

Remove the Apache Spark configuration "spark.databricks.session.share true".

Written by shashank.chaudhary

Last published at: March 7th, 2025

Problem

When you try to list your Hive metastore tables in Catalog Explorer using a Unity Catalog-enabled cluster, you receive the following error. 

 

Error getting schemas
summary: SparkException: Process List(/bin/su, spark-) exited with code 1. ","\tat org.apache.spark.util.Utils$.executeAndGetOutputInternal(Utils.scala:1433)","\tat org.apache.spark.util.Utils$.executeAndGetOutput(Utils.scala:1367)","\tat

 

Cause

You have the Apache Spark configuration spark.databricks.session.share set to true.

 

Solution

Remove the Spark configuration spark.databricks.session.share true. 

 

When set to true, this configuration helps share a single Spark session across different notebooks so views created in one notebook can be used from another. However, the configuration is outdated and it’s best to avoid using it.