1. Make sure hive is installed on your EMR instance

2. Can't SSH into EMR master?

Error: Connection Refused --> check your security group permissions

Go to EC2 dashboard.
Select your master instance.
In the 'Description' tab, click the Security Group (probably ElasticMapReduce-master).
Under the 'Inbound' tab, add a rule for SSH.

3. Getting java errors when running 'hive' command

Username error: make an MySQL instance on RDS. Then add this as a file called 'hive-site.xml' under ~/hive/conf/hive-site.xml:

<configuration>
  <property>
    <name>javax.jdo.option.ConnectionURL</name>
    <value>jdbc:mysql://YOURHOSTNAME:3306/hive?createDatabaseIfNotExist=true</value>
    <description>JDBC connect string for a JDBC metastore</description>
  </property>
  <property>
    <name>javax.jdo.option.ConnectionUserName</name>
    <value>YOURUSERNAME</value>
    <description>Username to use against metastore database</description>
  </property>
  <property>
    <name>javax.jdo.option.ConnectionPassword</name>
    <value>YOURPASSWORD</value>
    <description>Password to use against metastore database</description>
  </property>
</configuration>

Getting MissingTableException: Required table missing VERSION when starting hive on mysql

Go to ~/hive/bin/ and run this:

schematool -dbType mysql -initSchema