@Override
  public boolean checkFatalErrors(Counters ctrs, StringBuilder errMsg) {
     Counters.Counter cntr = ctrs.findCounter(
        HiveConf.getVar(job, HiveConf.ConfVars.HIVE_COUNTER_GROUP),
        Operator.HIVE_COUNTER_FATAL);
    return cntr != null && cntr.getValue() > 0;
  }
Fatal errors are those errors that cannot be recovered by retries. These are application
dependent. Examples of fatal errors include: - the small table in the map-side joins is too
large to be feasible to be handled by one mapper. The job should fail and the user should be
warned to use regular joins rather than map-side joins. Fatal errors are indicated by counters
that are set at execution time. If the counter is non-zero, a fatal error occurred. The value
of the counter indicates the error type.

@return true if fatal errors happened during job execution, false otherwise.
ql/src/java/org/apache/hadoop/hive/ql/exec/mr/ExecDriver.java