title: Can't start Cassandra
body: <p>I'm trying to run cqlsh to connect to cassandra and received the following error messages.</p>
  <p>a) error from cqlsh running:</p>
  <pre><code>Connection error: ('Unable to connect to any servers', {'127.0.0.1:9042': error(61, &quot;Tried connecting to [('127.0.0.1', 9042)]. Last error: Connection refused&quot;)})
  </code></pre>
  <p>b) error message after running cassandra:</p>
  <pre><code>Exception (java.lang.ExceptionInInitializerError) encountered during startup: null
  java.lang.ExceptionInInitializerError
      at org.apache.cassandra.db.SystemKeyspace.checkHealth(SystemKeyspace.java:709)
      at org.apache.cassandra.service.StartupChecks$9.execute(StartupChecks.java:351)
      at org.apache.cassandra.service.StartupChecks.verify(StartupChecks.java:109)
      at org.apache.cassandra.service.CassandraDaemon.setup(CassandraDaemon.java:188)
      at org.apache.cassandra.service.CassandraDaemon.activate(CassandraDaemon.java:607)
      at org.apache.cassandra.service.CassandraDaemon.main(CassandraDaemon.java:717)
  Caused by: java.lang.IllegalArgumentException: Bad configuration; unable to start server: At least one DataFileDirectory must be specified
      at org.apache.cassandra.config.DatabaseDescriptor.createAllDirectories(DatabaseDescriptor.java:846)
      at org.apache.cassandra.db.Keyspace.&lt;clinit&gt;(Keyspace.java:66)
      ... 6 more
  ERROR 00:27:05 Exception encountered during startup
  java.lang.ExceptionInInitializerError: null
      at org.apache.cassandra.db.SystemKeyspace.checkHealth(SystemKeyspace.java:709) ~[apache-cassandra-2.2.17.jar:2.2.17]
      at org.apache.cassandra.service.StartupChecks$9.execute(StartupChecks.java:351) ~[apache-cassandra-2.2.17.jar:2.2.17]
      at org.apache.cassandra.service.StartupChecks.verify(StartupChecks.java:109) ~[apache-cassandra-2.2.17.jar:2.2.17]
      at org.apache.cassandra.service.CassandraDaemon.setup(CassandraDaemon.java:188) [apache-cassandra-2.2.17.jar:2.2.17]
      at org.apache.cassandra.service.CassandraDaemon.activate(CassandraDaemon.java:607) [apache-cassandra-2.2.17.jar:2.2.17]
      at org.apache.cassandra.service.CassandraDaemon.main(CassandraDaemon.java:717) [apache-cassandra-2.2.17.jar:2.2.17]
  Caused by: java.lang.IllegalArgumentException: Bad configuration; unable to start server: At least one DataFileDirectory must be specified
      at org.apache.cassandra.config.DatabaseDescriptor.createAllDirectories(DatabaseDescriptor.java:846) ~[apache-cassandra-2.2.17.jar:2.2.17]
      at org.apache.cassandra.db.Keyspace.&lt;clinit&gt;(Keyspace.java:66) ~[apache-cassandra-2.2.17.jar:2.2.17]
      ... 6 common frames omitted
  </code></pre>
  <p>c) brew status shows that there's an error running cassandra instance:</p>
  <pre><code>Name          Status  User   Plist
  cassandra@2.2 error    /Users/john/Library/LaunchAgents/homebrew.mxcl.cassandra@2.2.plist
  rabbitmq      stopped        
  redis         started  /Users/john/Library/LaunchAgents/homebrew.mxcl.redis.plist
  tomcat@7      stopped
  </code></pre>
  <p>Can anyone please help on this issue?</p>