title: How to install Cassandra on MacOs Big Sur
body: <p>I installed Cassandra on MacOs using brew: <code>brew install cassandra</code>
  and ran it successfully <code>cassandra -f</code>.</p>
  <p>After upgrading to MacOs Big Sur cassandra fails to start with this error:</p>
  <pre><code>Cannot change the number of tokens from 512 to 256
  Fatal configuration error; unable to start server.  See log for stacktrace.
  ERROR [main] 2021-01-05 11:53:34,647 CassandraDaemon.java:803 - Fatal configuration error
  org.apache.cassandra.exceptions.ConfigurationException: Cannot change the number of tokens from 512 to 256
      at org.apache.cassandra.service.StorageService.joinTokenRing(StorageService.java:1050) ~[apache-cassandra-3.11.9.jar:3.11.9]
      at org.apache.cassandra.service.StorageService.initServer(StorageService.java:732) ~[apache-cassandra-3.11.9.jar:3.11.9]
      at org.apache.cassandra.service.StorageService.initServer(StorageService.java:666) ~[apache-cassandra-3.11.9.jar:3.11.9]
      at org.apache.cassandra.service.CassandraDaemon.setup(CassandraDaemon.java:395) [apache-cassandra-3.11.9.jar:3.11.9]
      at org.apache.cassandra.service.CassandraDaemon.activate(CassandraDaemon.java:633) [apache-cassandra-3.11.9.jar:3.11.9]
      at org.apache.cassandra.service.CassandraDaemon.main(CassandraDaemon.java:786) [apache-cassandra-3.11.9.jar:3.11.9]
  INFO  [StorageServiceShutdownHook] 2021-01-05 11:53:34,649 HintsService.java:209 - Paused hints dispatch
  INFO  [StorageServiceShutdownHook] 2021-01-05 11:53:34,649 Gossiper.java:1662 - Announcing shutdown
  INFO  [StorageServiceShutdownHook] 2021-01-05 11:53:34,657 StorageService.java:2408 - Node localhost/127.0.0.1 state jump to shutdown
  INFO  [StorageServiceShutdownHook] 2021-01-05 11:53:36,663 MessagingService.java:985 - Waiting for messaging service to quiesce
  INFO  [ACCEPT-localhost/127.0.0.1] 2021-01-05 11:53:36,665 MessagingService.java:1346 - MessagingService has terminated the accept() thread
  INFO  [StorageServiceShutdownHook] 2021-01-05 11:53:36,745 HintsService.java:209 - Paused hints dispatch
  
  </code></pre>
  <p>First I tried uninstalling Cassandra via brew, deleting the remaining files:
  <code>rm -rf /usr/local/etc/cassandra</code> and reinstalling it with brew. This didn't help.</p>
  <p>I found this <a href="https://support.datastax.com/hc/en-us/articles/205199715-Node-startup-fails-with-error-ConfigurationException-Cannot-change-the-number-of-tokens-" rel="nofollow noreferrer">link</a> with complex support issues which rely on finding out where Cassandra config lies and a lot of reading about what are tokens in a cassandra context. It seems a bit extreme for an automatic development environment.</p>
  <p>How do I install Cassandra on MacOs Big Sur?
  Is there a quick fix</p>