The following snippet shows some of the kinds of properties that can be set using the properties file. For more detailed information, see the Apache Flume 1.5.2 documentation.

agent.sources = pstream 
agent.channels = memoryChannel
agent.channels.memoryChannel.type = memory 

agent.sources.pstream.channels = memoryChannel 
agent.sources.pstream.type = exec 
agent.sources.pstream.command = tail -f /etc/passwd 

agent.sinks = hdfsSinkagent.sinks.hdfsSink.type = hdfs 
agent.sinks.hdfsSink.channel = memoryChannel
agent.sinks.hdfsSink.hdfs.path = hdfs://hdp/user/root/flumetest 
agent.sinks.hdfsSink.hdfs.fileType = SequenceFile 
agent.sinks.hdfsSink.hdfs.writeFormat = Text

The source here is defined as an exec source. The agent runs a given command on startup, which streams data to stdout, where the source gets it.

In this case, the command is a Python test script. The channel is defined as an in-memory channel and the sink is an HDFS sink.