(Ref) The bit that caught me out was this kept failing with Error: Password not present and a Python stack trace that ended with subprocess.CalledProcessError: Command '/var/run/cloudera-scm-agent/process/78-hue-HUE_SERVER/altscript.sh sec-1-secret_key' returned non-zero exit status 1 The answer (it seems) is to ensure that HUE_SECRET_KEY is set (to any value!) Launch shell: export HUE_SECRET_KEY=foobar /opt/cloudera/parcels/CDH-5.7.1-1.cdh5.7.1.p0.11/lib/hue/build/env/bin/hue shell Reset password for hue, activate account and make it superuser from django.contrib.auth.models import User user = User.objects.get(username='hue') user.