Use Michael-noll's guide for version 1 & ssh
http://www.michael-noll.com/tutorials/running-hadoop-on-ubuntu-linux-single-node-cluster/
http://hadoop.apache.org/docs/r1.1.2/single_node_setup.html

Or this one for Hadoop 2
http://jugnu-life.blogspot.com/2012/05/hadoop-20-install-tutorial-023x.html
http://hadoop.apache.org/docs/r2.0.5-alpha/

sudo apt-get install openssh-server openssh-client

sudo addgroup hadoop
sudo adduser --ingroup hadoop hduser
su - hduser

If you cannot ssh to localhost without a passphrase, execute the following commands:
ssh-keygen -t dsa -P '' -f ~/.ssh/id_dsa
cat ~/.ssh/id_dsa.pub >> ~/.ssh/authorized_keys

Testing your SSH
ssh localhost
Say yes
#exit

As the hduser, after downloading the tar

tar -xvf hadoop-2.0.5-alpha.tar.gz
ln -s hadoop-2.0.5-alpha hadoop
#edit .bashrc
export JAVA_HOME=/usr/lib/jvm/jdk1.7.0_21/
export HADOOP_PREFIX="/home/hduser/hadoop"
export PATH=$PATH:$HADOOP_PREFIX/bin
export PATH=$PATH:$HADOOP_PREFIX/sbin

export HADOOP_MAPRED_HOME=${HADOOP_PREFIX}
export HADOOP_COMMON_HOME=${HADOOP_PREFIX}
export HADOOP_HDFS_HOME=${HADOOP_PREFIX}
export YARN_HOME=${HADOOP_PREFIX}

Stolen from http://jugnu-life.blogspot.com/2012/05/hadoop-20-install-tutorial-023x.html Please click on his blog.

Login again so bash has paths above. In Hadoop 2.x version /etc/hadoop is the default conf directory. We need to modify / create following property files in the /etc/hadoop directory

cd ~
mkdir -p /home/hduser/workspace/hadoop_space/hadoop23/dfs/name;mkdir -p /home/hduser/workspace/hadoop_space/hadoop23/dfs/data;mkdir -p /home/hduser/workspace/hadoop_space/hadoop23/mapred/system;mkdir -p /home/hduser/workspace/hadoop_space/hadoop23/mapred/local

Edit core-site.xml with following contents

<configuration>
<property>
<name>fs.default.name</name>
<value>hdfs://localhost:8020</value>
<description>The name of the default file system. Either the literal string "local" or a host:port for NDFS.</description>
<final>true</final>
</property>
</configuration>

Edit hdfs-site.xml with following contents

<configuration>
<property>
<name>dfs.namenode.name.dir</name>
<value>file:/home/hduser/workspace/hadoop_space/hadoop23/dfs/name</value>
<description>Determines where on the local filesystem the DFS name node
should store the name table. If this is a comma-delimited list of directories then the name table is replicated in all of the
directories, for redundancy. </description>
<final>true</final>
</property>

<property>
<name>dfs.datanode.data.dir</name>
<value>file:/home/hduser/workspace/hadoop_space/hadoop23/dfs/data</value>
<description>Determines where on the local filesystem an DFS data node
should store its blocks. If this is a comma-delimited list of directories, then data will be stored in all named
directories, typically on different devices. Directories that do not exist are ignored.
</description>
<final>true</final>
</property>

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

<property>
<name>dfs.permissions</name>
<value>false</value>
</property>

</configuration>

The path
file:/home/hduser/workspace/hadoop_space/hadoop23/dfs/name AND
file:/home/hduser/workspace/hadoop_space/hadoop23/dfs/data
are some folders in your computer which would give space to store data and name edit files

Path should be specified as URI
Create a file mapred-site.xml inside /etc/hadoop with following contents

<configuration>
<property>
<name>mapreduce.framework.name</name>
<value>yarn</value>
</property>

<property>
<name>mapred.system.dir</name>
<value>file:/home/hduser/workspace/hadoop_space/hadoop23/mapred/system</value>
<final>true</final>
</property>

<property>
<name>mapred.local.dir</name>
<value>file:/home/hduser/workspace/hadoop_space/hadoop23/mapred/local</value>
<final>true</final>
</property>

</configuration>

The path

file:/home/hduser/workspace/hadoop_space/hadoop23/mapred/system AND
file:/home/hduser/workspace/hadoop_space/hadoop23/mapred/local
are some folders in your computer which would give space to store data

Path should be specified as URI

Edit yarn-site.xml with following contents

<configuration>
<property>
<name>yarn.nodemanager.aux-services</name>
<value>mapreduce.shuffle</value>
</property>
<property>
<name>yarn.nodemanager.aux-services.mapreduce.shuffle.class</name>
<value>org.apache.hadoop.mapred.ShuffleHandler</value>
</property>
</configuration>

Format the namenode

# hdfs namenode –format

Say Yes and let it complete the format

Time to start the daemons

# hadoop-daemon.sh start namenode
# hadoop-daemon.sh start datanode

You can also start both of them together by

# start-dfs.sh

Start Yarn Daemons

# yarn-daemon.sh start resourcemanager
# yarn-daemon.sh start nodemanager

You can also start all yarn daemons together by

# start-yarn.sh

Time to check if Daemons have started

Enter the command

# jps
2539 NameNode
2744 NodeManager
3075 Jps
3030 DataNode
2691 ResourceManager

Time to launch UI

Open the localhost:8088 to see the Resource Manager page

Done :)

Happy Hadooping :)