Genetic Algorithm to run on Hadoop. I used as example the optimization Knapsack Problem. To execute this program, it is necessary to have a Hadoop cluster working. Setting up the Hadoop Cluster for testing on a sinlge machine: Download hadoop 1.21 from: http://hadoop.apache.org/releases.html Install a Java 6: $ sudo apt-get install oracle-java6-installer Inside the hadoop home directory, update a configuration file in conf/ : $ vim conf/hadoop-env.sh export JAVA_HOME=/usr/lib/jvm/java-6-oracle/ export HADOOP_HOME=/home/renata/hadoop-1.2.1 export HADOOP_VERSION=1.2.1 Create an input directory, to place your input file: $ mkdir input Put some content in: $ cp conf/*.xml input To test if your hadoop is working properly: $ bin/hadoop jar hadoop-examples*.jar grep input output 'dfs[a-z.]+' Don't forget to remove the output file after running a Job. Hadoop doesn't do this for you. $ rm -rf output Now, to test the Genetic jar file: $ export HADOOP_HOME=/home/renata/hadoop-1.2.1 $ export HADOOP_VERSION=1.2.1 To compile the code run : $ javac -classpath ${HADOOP_HOME}/hadoop-core*.jar -d genetic_classes Genetic.java And create the jar: $ jar -cvf genetic.jar -C genetic_classes/ . Now, to run the code (once you put the input data on "input/" directory): $ bin/hadoop jar genetic.jar org.myorg.Genetic input output