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How to Stop New Hadoop MapReduce Jobs Using Queue ACLs

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This article shows how to temporarily stop new Hadoop MapReduce jobs from being submitted by enabling ACLs and configuring mapred-queue-acls.xml. Existing jobs continue to run, which makes this pattern useful for maintenance windows or decommissioning work on a classic MapReduce cluster.

In a classic Hadoop MapReduce (MRv1) cluster, there are situations where you want to stop accepting new MapReduce jobs while allowing already running jobs to finish. This is especially useful during maintenance, node decommissioning or cluster reconfiguration.

One simple way to achieve this is to enable ACLs on the MapReduce job queue and then configure the submission ACL so that effectively nobody is allowed to submit new jobs.

1. Enable ACLs for MapReduce queues

First, configure queue ACLs in $HADOOP/conf/mapred-queue-acls.xml. A typical configuration might allow a set of users and groups to submit jobs and a smaller set of admins to manage them: 

<configuration>
  <property>
    <name>mapred.queue.default.acl-submit-job</name>
    <value>user1,user2,group1,group2,admins</value>
  </property>

  <property>
    <name>mapred.queue.default.acl-administer-jobs</name>
    <value>admins</value>
  </property>
</configuration>

Next, enable ACL handling in the MapReduce framework by editing conf/mapred-site.xml and setting: 

<property>
  <name>mapred.acls.enabled</name>
  <value>true</value>
</property>

With this in place, the MapReduce framework will enforce the ACLs defined in mapred-queue-acls.xml.

2. Temporarily block new job submissions

To block new jobs from being submitted to the default queue, you can set the submit ACL to a single space character. This is effectively an ACL that matches nobody: 

<configuration>
  <property>
    <name>mapred.queue.default.acl-submit-job</name>
    <value> </value>  <!-- note: a single space -->
  </property>

  <property>
    <name>mapred.queue.default.acl-administer-jobs</name>
    <value>admins</value>
  </property>
</configuration>

Because mapred-queue-acls.xml is polled regularly by the JobTracker, these changes take effect without restarting the whole cluster. From this point on:

  • All new job submissions to the default queue are rejected due to ACLs.
  • All already running jobs continue to run until completion.

This gives operations teams a controlled way to put a cluster effectively into a “no new jobs” mode while letting current workloads drain naturally.

3. Re-enabling submissions

When maintenance is finished, simply restore the original ACLs in mapred-queue-acls.xml (for example, user1,user2,group1,group2,admins) and the cluster will start accepting new jobs again, without requiring a full restart.

Note on newer Hadoop/YARN setups

In modern YARN-based clusters with Capacity or Fair Scheduler, the same idea is implemented by adjusting queue ACLs and scheduler configuration on the ResourceManager side. The details differ, but the core pattern remains the same: restrict who can submit jobs to a queue to temporarily block new workloads while existing applications finish.

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