I\'m using cassandra 0.7.4 on centos5.5 x86_64 with jdk-1.6.0_24 64-Bit. When I restart it , it throw out:
ERROR 11:37:32,009 Excepti
You should never modify the system keyspace unless you really, really know what you are doing. (If you have to ask, you don't. :)
So, the answer is: don't do that.
To recover, you should set initial_token in cassandra.yaml to your node's current token (which you can see with "nodetool ring"), then delete the system keyspace and restart. Then you'll need to recreate your columnfamily definitions, but your data will not be affected.