Could not find org.apache.zookeeper.server.quorum.QuorumPeerMain

This miniature article explains how to resolve the error Error: Could not find or load main class org.apache.zookeeper.server.quorum.QuorumPeerMain” when we start the Apache Zookeeper ( apache-zookeeper-3.5.6.tar.gz) installed on a multi-node cluster. Distributed systems/applications leverage the service offers by Apache Zookeeper to manage their synchronization, configuration service as well as naming registry. Apache Zookeeper is a primary backbone for Hadoop, Kafka, HBase, Tableau, etc. The above mention error displays on the console when executing the script zkServer.sh
with the input parameter “start” available inside the bin directory. This happens due to the unavailability of lib directory that holds the zookeeper-3.5.6.jar file.
Instead of extract/install apache-zookeeper-3.5.6.tar.gz on each node in the cluster, we should proceed with apache-zookeeper-3.5.6-bin.tar.gz. that has all the required jar files inside the lib directory. This binary can be downloaded from the following link.

https://archive.apache.org/dist/zookeeper/zookeeper-3.5.6/apache-zookeeper-3.5.6-bin.tar.gz

Written by
Gautam Goswami

Originally published at https://onlineguwahati.com on February 22, 2020.