Prerequisites
Before we begin, make sure the following components are installed on your workstation:
This tutorial had been written for and tested with the Hadoop version 0.19.1 if you are using another version some things might not work for you.
Make sure that you have exactly the same versions of the software as shown above. Hadoop will not work with versions of Java prior to 1.6 and it will not work with the versions of Eclipse after 3.3.2 due to plugin API incompatibility.
Installing Cygwin
After you made sure that the above prerequisites are installed the next step would be to install the cygwin environment. The cygwin is a set of UNIX packages ported to Microsoft Windows. It is needed to run Hadoop supplied scripts since they are all written for the UNIX platform.
To install the cygwin environment follow these steps:
- Download cygwin installer from here.
- Run the downloaded file. You will see the window shown on the screenshots below.
Cygwin Installer - When you see the above screen shot keep pressing 'Next' button until you see the package selection screen shown below. Make sure that you have package 'openssh' selected. This package is required for the correct functioning of the hadoop cluster and eclipse plugin.

- After you selected these packages press the 'Next' button to complete the installation.
If you have questions comments suggestions regarding this tutorial you can post them here or you can write me an email to tutorials AT v-lad.org.