1. Download and Extract Hadoop
2. Edit export JAVA_HOME in etc/hadoop/hadoop-env.sh
3. Add the following configuration

• etc/hadoop/core-site.xml

<configuration>
    <property>
        <name>fs.defaultFS</name>
        <value>hdfs://localhost:9000</value>
    </property>
</configuration>

• etc/hadoop/hdfs-site.xml

<configuration>
    <property>
        <name>dfs.replication</name>
        <value>1</value>
    </property>
</configuration>

1. Format the filesystem bin/hdfs namenode -format
2. Start NameNode daemon and DataNode daemon sbin/start-dfs.sh

Reference : http://hadoop.apache.org/docs/current/hadoop-project-dist/hadoop-common/SingleCluster.html