I'm encountering the same problem as Cassandra system.hints table is empty even when the one of the node is down:
I am learning Cassandra from academy.datastax.com. I am trying the Replication and Consistency demo on local machine. RF = 3 and Consistency = 1.
When my Node3 is down and I am updating my table using update command, the SYSTEM.HINTS table is expected to store hint for node3 but it is always empty.
@amalober pointed out that this was due to a difference the Cassandra version being used. From the Cassandra docs at DataStax:
In Cassandra 3.0 and later, the hint is stored in a local hints directory on each node for improved replay.
This same question was asked 3 years ago, How to access the local data of a Cassandra node, but the accepted solution was to
...Hack something together using the Cassandra source that reads SSTables and have that feed the local client you're hoping to build. A great starting point would be looking at the source of org.apache.cassandra.tools.SSTableExport which is used in the sstable2json tool.
Is there an easier way to access the local hints directory of a Cassandra node?