Setting this property creates a tmp directory in BOTH local and HDFS. It does so in HDFS because other properties use hadoop.tmp.dir as a base path to store data in HDFS. Example: dfs.name.dir=${hadoop.tmp.dir}/dfs/name creates this path in hdfs. There is no way to have this property NOT create a path locally. See these links for a good discussion: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/2354525/what-should-be-hadoop-tmp-dir https://stackoverflow.com/questions/40169610/where-exactly-should-hadoop-tmp-dir-be-set-core-site-xml-or-hdfs-site-xml ... View more