Simple HiveQL query fails with undefined SemanticException

I am working with an HDInsight cluster using Hive. I already got the data that I need piece by piece, but I tried this query along the way - it didn't work - and I would like to understand why.

I read the HiveQL spec, entered the query into HiveQL syntax checks, and as far as I can tell, this should work.

select yr, mon, day, hr, count(*)
from table
where yr = '2014' and mon in ('01', '02', '03', '04', '05', '06')
group by yr, mon, day, hr;

      

        
        
        
      

    

Crashing with

...
FAILED: SemanticException MetaException(message:Exception thrown when executing query)

      

        
        
        
      

    

So why isn't it? And / or is there a way to enable warnings / increase error reporting to get more information when error messages are reported with undefined exceptions like this?