Problem scenario
You are trying to start HDFS. But you get this error: "WARN conf.Configuration: bad conf file: element not <property>"
What should you do?
Solution
Look at mapred-site.xml, hdfs-site.xml, and core-site.xml files. Verify you have a <property> tag in each file.
cat /path/to/mapred-site.xml | grep -i property
cat /path/to/hdfs-site.xml | grep -i property
cat /path/to/core-site.xml | grep -i property
If there is no <property> tag and closing </property> tag in each one of these three files, you may receive this error above.
Look for something like this:
<configuration>
<name>
...
</name>
</configuration>
The above is an example of a missing <property> tag.