Reply To: HDP 2.3 Clean Install – "user root cannot impersonate admin"

Create the hdfs user on your machine. I suppose you are using linux, so as root run the command: adduser hdfs

and then change the password with:

passwd hdfs

What is running as root is the Ambari server.

For example, if as root you can do this: hadoop fs -ls /

then try

su – hdfs

or

su – lrichards

and try to execute the same command again.

If it works, then is an Ambari issue.  In that case you might need to change/add proxyusers properties to the HDFS configuration:

http://docs.hortonworks.com/HDPDocuments/Ambari-2.1.0.0/bk_ambari_views_guide/content/_configuring_your_cluster_for_files_view.html