hive external table needing write access

I don't have a solution to this, but as a workaround I've discovered that

CREATE TEMPORARY EXTERNAL TABLE

works without write permissions, the difference being the table (but not the underlying data) will disappear after your session.

If you require write access to hdfs files give hadoop dfs -chmod 777 /folder name

this means your giving all access permissions to that particular file.

Partially answering my own question:

Indeed it seems not to be resolved by hive at this moment. But here is an interesting fact: hive does not require write access to the files themselves, but only to the folder. For example, you could have a folder with permissions 777, but the files within it, which are accessed by hive, can stay read-only, e.g. 644.