Formate your namenode...Start hadoop system and then...
just to store file, you can use
hadoop fs -copyFromLocal File.xml /
To check your file is stored on HDFS run this... or in web-browser type this URL "hostname:50070" - hostname==IP address of machine on which hadoop namenode is installed. (if this is not a single node cluster).
hadoop fs -ls /
To read file on HDFS from shell
hadoop fs -cat /file.xml