Transfer file out from HDFS

Question

I want to transfer files out from HDFS to local filesystem of a different server which is not in hadoop cluster but in the network.

I could have done:

Answer 1

You could make use of webHDFS REST API to do that. Do a curl from the machine where you want to download the files.

curl -i -L "http://namenode:50075/webhdfs/v1/path_of_the_file?op=OPEN" -o ~/destination

Another approach could be to use the DataNode API through wget to do this :

wget http://$datanode:50075/streamFile/path_of_the_file

But, the most convenient way, IMHO, would be to use the NameNOde webUI. Since this machine is part of the network, you could just point your web browser to NameNode_Machine:50070. After that browse through the HDFS, open the file you want to download and click Download this file.