Note to self. Pyspark failling with "Error while instantiating ‘org.apache.spark.sql.hive.HiveSessionState’"

If you run pyspark and see this error (it happens in scala-shell as well):

Error while instantiating ‘org.apache.spark.sql.hive.HiveSessionState’  

The solution is easy, yet ridiculous.
1. Create the folder /tmp/hive
2. Give it chmod permissions sudo chmod -R 777 /tmp/hive

Found here