Here are the steps involved checking out hbase and making it run. Takes about ten minutes.
Download the latest stable release from the
HBase download page Move the download to wherever you want to run hbase from, say to ~/hbase
If running a remote HDFS that you want hbase to connnect to, edit conf/hbase-site.xml and add a property for hbase.rootdir. Set it to hdfs://NAMENODE_HOST:NAMENODE_PORT/HBASE_ROOTDIR. For example, hdfs://localhost:9000/hbase. Otherwise, use the default: file:///tmp/hbase-${user.home}/hbase UNLESS you are running on windows (TODO: Restore what you do here when on windows -- St.Ack).
Edit conf/hbase-env.sh and define JAVA_HOME
Start hbase with ~/hbase/bin/start-hbase.sh (hbase logs are viewable in ~/hbase/logs by default)
Enter hbase shell by running ~/hbase/bin/hbase shell
Have fun with hbase
Stop the hbase servers with ~/hbase/bin/stop-hbase.sh. Wait until the servers are finished stopping. Avoid killing servers (though a 'kill pid' should be fine as opposed to a 'kill -9 pid').
Based on an hadoop-dev list posting by Dennis Kubes, Sun, 21 Oct 2007 23:09:46 -0500.