diff --git a/CHANGES.txt b/CHANGES.txt
index 0145750412..6d594598b3 100644
--- a/CHANGES.txt
+++ b/CHANGES.txt
@@ -76,6 +76,9 @@ Trunk (unreleased changes)
 
     HADOOP-6435. Make RPC.waitForProxy with timeout public. (Steve Loughran
     via tomwhite)
+  
+    HADOOP-6472. add tokenCache option to GenericOptionsParser for passing
+     file with secret keys to a map reduce job. (boryas)
 
   OPTIMIZATIONS
 
diff --git a/src/java/org/apache/hadoop/util/GenericOptionsParser.java b/src/java/org/apache/hadoop/util/GenericOptionsParser.java
index dc13feddf9..46973c28dd 100644
--- a/src/java/org/apache/hadoop/util/GenericOptionsParser.java
+++ b/src/java/org/apache/hadoop/util/GenericOptionsParser.java
@@ -233,6 +233,12 @@ private static Options buildGeneralOptions(Options opts) {
     .withDescription("comma separated archives to be unarchived" +
                      " on the compute machines.")
     .create("archives");
+    
+    // file with security tokens
+    Option tokensFile = OptionBuilder.withArgName("tokensFile")
+    .hasArg()
+    .withDescription("name of the file with the tokens")
+    .create("tokenCacheFile");
 
     opts.addOption(fs);
     opts.addOption(jt);
@@ -241,6 +247,7 @@ private static Options buildGeneralOptions(Options opts) {
     opts.addOption(libjars);
     opts.addOption(files);
     opts.addOption(archives);
+    opts.addOption(tokensFile);
 
     return opts;
   }
@@ -295,6 +302,19 @@ private void processGeneralOptions(Configuration conf,
       }
     }
     conf.setBoolean("mapred.used.genericoptionsparser", true);
+    
+    // tokensFile
+    if(line.hasOption("tokenCacheFile")) {
+      String fileName = line.getOptionValue("tokenCacheFile");
+      // check if the local file exists
+      FileSystem localFs = FileSystem.getLocal(conf);
+      Path p = new Path(fileName);
+      if (!localFs.exists(p)) {
+          throw new FileNotFoundException("File "+fileName+" does not exist.");
+      }
+      LOG.debug("setting conf tokensFile: " + fileName);
+      conf.set("tokenCacheFile", localFs.makeQualified(p).toString());
+    }
   }
   
   /**
diff --git a/src/test/core/org/apache/hadoop/util/TestGenericOptionsParser.java b/src/test/core/org/apache/hadoop/util/TestGenericOptionsParser.java
index 5b48db1a58..a9474c8813 100644
--- a/src/test/core/org/apache/hadoop/util/TestGenericOptionsParser.java
+++ b/src/test/core/org/apache/hadoop/util/TestGenericOptionsParser.java
@@ -19,22 +19,23 @@
 
 import java.io.File;
 import java.io.FileNotFoundException;
+import java.io.IOException;
 import java.net.URI;
 
+import junit.framework.TestCase;
+
 import org.apache.hadoop.conf.Configuration;
 import org.apache.hadoop.fs.FileSystem;
 import org.apache.hadoop.fs.Path;
 
-import junit.framework.TestCase;
-
 public class TestGenericOptionsParser extends TestCase {
-  private static File testDir = 
-    new File(System.getProperty("test.build.data", "/tmp"), "generic");
+  File testDir;
+  Configuration conf;
+  FileSystem localFs;
+    
   
   public void testFilesOption() throws Exception {
-    Configuration conf = new Configuration();
     File tmpFile = new File(testDir, "tmpfile");
-    FileSystem localFs = FileSystem.getLocal(conf);
     Path tmpPath = new Path(tmpFile.toString());
     localFs.create(tmpPath);
     String[] args = new String[2];
@@ -74,7 +75,62 @@ public void testFilesOption() throws Exception {
       th instanceof FileNotFoundException);
     files = conf2.get("tmpfiles");
     assertNull("files is not null", files);
-    testDir.delete();
+  }
+  
+  @Override
+  protected void setUp() throws Exception {
+    super.setUp();
+    conf = new Configuration();
+    localFs = FileSystem.getLocal(conf);
+    testDir = new File(System.getProperty("test.build.data", "/tmp"), "generic");
+    if(testDir.exists())
+      localFs.delete(new Path(testDir.toString()), true);
   }
 
+  @Override
+  protected void tearDown() throws Exception {
+    super.tearDown();
+    if(testDir.exists()) {
+      localFs.delete(new Path(testDir.toString()), true);
+    }
+  }
+
+  /**
+   * testing -fileCache option
+   * @throws IOException
+   */
+  public void testTokenCacheOption() throws IOException {
+    FileSystem localFs = FileSystem.getLocal(conf);
+    
+    File tmpFile = new File(testDir, "tokenCacheFile");
+    if(tmpFile.exists()) {
+      tmpFile.delete();
+    }
+    String[] args = new String[2];
+    // pass a files option 
+    args[0] = "-tokenCacheFile";
+    args[1] = tmpFile.toString();
+    
+    // test non existing file
+    Throwable th = null;
+    try {
+      new GenericOptionsParser(conf, args);
+    } catch (Exception e) {
+      th = e;
+    }
+    assertNotNull(th);
+    assertTrue("FileNotFoundException is not thrown",
+        th instanceof FileNotFoundException);
+    
+    // create file
+    Path tmpPath = new Path(tmpFile.toString());
+    localFs.create(tmpPath);
+    new GenericOptionsParser(conf, args);
+    String fileName = conf.get("tokenCacheFile");
+    assertNotNull("files is null", fileName);
+    assertEquals("files option does not match",
+      localFs.makeQualified(tmpPath).toString(), fileName);
+    
+    localFs.delete(new Path(testDir.getAbsolutePath()), true);
+  }
 }