Normally it needs to look something like:

pinotFSSpecs:
  - scheme: hdfs
    className: org.apache.pinot.plugin.filesystem.HadoopPinotFS
    configs:
        hadoop.conf.path: '/mnt/hadoop/etc/hadoop/'

Where

hadoop.conf.path

is the appropriate path to the directory where the Hadoop configuration files live (which is needed for Pinot to talk to the HDFS cluster)

this is my controller config. pinot.service.role=CONTROLLER pinot.cluster.name=pinot-uat controller.host=pinot-uat01 controller.data.dir=hdfs://tmp/hdptest/pinot-uat/controller/segment #controller.data.dir=/pinot-data controller.local.temp.dir=/tmp/pinot/data/controller controller.zk.str=172.19.131.1162181,172.19.131.1172181,172.19.131.118:2181 controller.enable.split.commit=true controller.access.protocols.http.port=9000 controller.helix.cluster.name=pinot-uat pinot.controller.storage.factory.class.hdfs=org.apache.pinot.plugin.filesystem.HadoopPinotFS pinot.controller.storage.factory.hdfs.hadoop.conf.path=/etc/hadoop/conf pinot.controller.segment.fetcher.protocols=file,http,hdfs pinot.controller.segment.fetcher.hdfs.class=org.apache.pinot.common.utils.fetcher.PinotFSSegmentFetcher pinot.controller.segment.fetcher.hdfs.hadoop.kerberos.principle=infa@TRUE.CARE pinot.controller.segment.fetcher.hdfs.hadoop.kerberos.keytab=/data/apache-pinot/keytab/infa_keytab.keytab pinot.controller.storage.factory.hdfs.hadoop.kerberos.principle=infa@TRUE.CARE pinot.controller.storage.factory.hdfs.hadoop.kerberos.keytab=/data/apache-pinot/keytab/infa_keytab.keytab controller.vip.host=pinotuat.true.care controller.vip.port=9000 controller.port=9000 pinot.set.instance.id.to.hostname=true pinot.server.grpc.enable=true

system start script. [root@poc-pinot01 client]# cat /usr/lib/systemd/system/pinot-controller.service [Unit] Description=run pinot # mdl-sysinit.target target ensure cloud-init is run and file systems are up [Service] # ulimit -l and ulimit -n settings LimitMEMLOCK=infinity LimitNOFILE=323840 LimitNPROC=323840 #ExecStart=/data/apache-pinot/bin/pinot-admin.sh StartController -configFileName /data/apache-pinot/conf/pinot-controller.conf ExecStart=/data/apache-pinot/bin/start-controller.sh -configFileName /data/apache-pinot/conf/pinot-controller.conf # run consul as consul for reduced permissions # but run ExecStartPre commands as root PermissionsStartOnly=true User=pinot Restart=always Environment="HADOOP_HOME=/usr/lib/hadoop" Environment="HADOOP_VERSION=2.6.0-cdh5.16.2" #Environment="HADOOP_VERSION=2.7.0" Environment="HADOOP_GUAVA_VERSION=11.0.2" Environment="HADOOP_GSON_VERSION=2.2.4" Environment="GC_LOG_LOCATION=/data/apache-pinot/logs" Environment="PINOT_VERSION=0.9.3" Environment="PINOT_DISTRIBUTION_DIR=/data/apache-pinot" #Environment="HADOOP_CLIENT_OPTS=-Dplugins.dir=${PINOT_DISTRIBUTION_DIR}/plugins -Dlog4j2.configurationFile=${PINOT_DISTRIBUTION_DIR}/conf/pinot-ingestion-job-log4j2.xml" Environment="SERVER_CONF_DIR=/data/apache-pinot/conf" #Environment="ZOOKEEPER_ADDRESS=172.19.131.1162181,172.19.131.1172181,172.19.131.118:2181" Environment="CLASSPATH_PREFIX=${HADOOP_HOME}/client/hadoop-hdfs-${HADOOP_VERSION}.jar:${HADOOP_HOME}/client/hadoop-annotations-${HADOOP_VERSION}.jar:${HADOOP_HOME}/client/hadoop-auth-${HADOOP_VERSION}.jar:${HADOOP_HOME}/client/hadoop-common-${HADOOP_VERSION}.jar:${HADOOP_HOME}/client/guava-${HADOOP_GUAVA_VERSION}.jar:${HADOOP_HOME}/client/gson-${HADOOP_GSON_VERSION}.jar" Environment="JAVA_OPTS=-Xms6G -Xmx8G" [Install] WantedBy=multi-user.target

[root@poc-pinot01 conf]# pwd /etc/hadoop/conf [root@poc-pinot01 conf]# ls -ltr total 48 drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Mar 8 17:46 backup -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 1594 Mar 8 17:47 topology.py -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 13652 Mar 8 17:47 topology.map -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 315 Mar 8 17:47 ssl-client.xml -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 314 Mar 8 17:47 log4j.properties -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 3791 Mar 8 17:47 hdfs-site.xml -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 2696 Mar 8 17:47 hadoop-env.sh -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 4636 Mar 8 17:47 core-site.xml

Also I assume you have the

pinot-hdfs

plugin in the Pinot plugins dir on your controller, right?