Bootstrap script for installing Apache Zeppelin on an Amazon EMR Cluster. Verfied on Amazon EMR release 4.x.

install-apache-zeppelin-on-amazon-emr.sh

#!/bin/bash -ex

if [ "$(cat /mnt/var/lib/info/instance.json | jq -r .isMaster)" == "true" ]; then
    # Install Git
    sudo yum -y install git

    # Install Maven
    wget -P /tmp http://apache.mirrors.spacedump.net/maven/maven-3/3.3.3/binaries/apache-maven-3.3.3-bin.tar.gz
    sudo mkdir /opt/apache-maven
    sudo tar -xvzf /tmp/apache-maven-3.3.3-bin.tar.gz -C /opt/apache-maven
    
    cat <<EOF >> /home/hadoop/.bashrc

# Maven
export MAVEN_HOME=/opt/apache-maven/apache-maven-3.3.3
export PATH=\$MAVEN_HOME/bin:\$PATH
EOF
    source /home/hadoop/.bashrc

    # Install Zeppelin
    git clone https://github.com/apache/incubator-zeppelin.git /home/hadoop/zeppelin
    cd /home/hadoop/zeppelin
    mvn clean package -Pspark-1.4 -Dhadoop.version=2.6.0 -Phadoop-2.6 -Pyarn -DskipTests

    # Configure Zeppelin
    SPARK_DEFAULTS=/usr/lib/spark/conf/spark-defaults.conf
    declare -a ZEPPELIN_JAVA_OPTS
    if [ -f $SPARK_DEFAULTS ]; then
        ZEPPELIN_JAVA_OPTS=("${ZEPPELIN_JAVA_OPTS[@]}" \
            $(grep spark.executor.instances $SPARK_DEFAULTS | awk '{print "-D" $1 "=" $2}'))
        ZEPPELIN_JAVA_OPTS=("${ZEPPELIN_JAVA_OPTS[@]}" \
            $(grep spark.executor.cores $SPARK_DEFAULTS | awk '{print "-D" $1 "=" $2}'))
        ZEPPELIN_JAVA_OPTS=("${ZEPPELIN_JAVA_OPTS[@]}" \
            $(grep spark.executor.memory $SPARK_DEFAULTS | awk '{print "-D" $1 "=" $2}'))
        ZEPPELIN_JAVA_OPTS=("${ZEPPELIN_JAVA_OPTS[@]}" \
            $(grep spark.default.parallelism $SPARK_DEFAULTS | awk '{print "-D" $1 "=" $2}'))
        ZEPPELIN_JAVA_OPTS=("${ZEPPELIN_JAVA_OPTS[@]}" \
            $(grep spark.yarn.executor.memoryOverhead $SPARK_DEFAULTS | awk '{print "-D" $1 "=" $2}'))
    fi
    echo "${ZEPPELIN_JAVA_OPTS[@]}"

    cp conf/zeppelin-env.sh.template conf/zeppelin-env.sh
    cat <<EOF >> conf/zeppelin-env.sh

export MASTER=yarn-client
export HADOOP_HOME=/usr/lib/hadoop
export HADOOP_CONF_DIR=/etc/hadoop/conf
export ZEPPELIN_SPARK_USEHIVECONTEXT=false
export ZEPPELIN_JAVA_OPTS="${ZEPPELIN_JAVA_OPTS[@]}"
export PYTHONPATH=$PYTHONPATH:/usr/lib/spark/python
EOF

    cat <<'EOF' > 0001-Add-Hadoop-libraries-and-EMRFS-to-Zeppelin-classpath.patch
From 2b0226e45207758d526522bd22d497c9def7c008 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
From: Anders Hammar <[email protected]>
Date: Fri, 18 Sep 2015 10:24:18 +0000
Subject: [PATCH] Add Hadoop libraries and EMRFS to Zeppelin classpath

---
 bin/interpreter.sh | 13 +++++++++++++
 1 file changed, 13 insertions(+)

diff --git a/bin/interpreter.sh b/bin/interpreter.sh
index e03a13b..de458f2 100755
--- a/bin/interpreter.sh
+++ b/bin/interpreter.sh
@@ -89,8 +89,21 @@ if [[ "${INTERPRETER_ID}" == "spark" ]]; then
       # CDH
       addJarInDir "${HADOOP_HOME}"
       addJarInDir "${HADOOP_HOME}/lib"
+
+      # Hadoop libraries
+      addJarInDir "${HADOOP_HOME}/../hadoop-hdfs"
+      addJarInDir "${HADOOP_HOME}/../hadoop-mapreduce"
+      addJarInDir "${HADOOP_HOME}/../hadoop-yarn"
+
+      # Hadoop LZO
+      addJarInDir "${HADOOP_HOME}/../hadoop-lzo/lib"
     fi

+    # Add EMRFS libraries
+    addJarInDir "/usr/share/aws/emr/emrfs/conf"
+    addJarInDir "/usr/share/aws/emr/emrfs/lib"
+    addJarInDir "/usr/share/aws/emr/emrfs/auxlib"
+
     addJarInDir "${INTERPRETER_DIR}/dep"
     PYSPARKPATH="${ZEPPELIN_HOME}/interpreter/spark/pyspark/pyspark.zip:${ZEPPELIN_HOME}/interpreter/spark/pyspark/py4j-0.8.2.1-src.zip"

--
2.1.0

EOF
    git config user.email "[email protected]"
    git config user.name "Your Name"
    git am 0001-Add-Hadoop-libraries-and-EMRFS-to-Zeppelin-classpath.patch

    # Start the Zeppelin daemon
    bin/zeppelin-daemon.sh start
fi

since there were no answers, I've created a simple bootstrap script to install Zeppelin 0.8 on EMR (tested with EMR 5.16.0)