diff --git a/hadoop-mapreduce-project/CHANGES.txt b/hadoop-mapreduce-project/CHANGES.txt
index 6a3af45a84..a7922ba232 100644
--- a/hadoop-mapreduce-project/CHANGES.txt
+++ b/hadoop-mapreduce-project/CHANGES.txt
@@ -159,6 +159,9 @@ Trunk (Unreleased)
     HADOOP-9372. Fix bad timeout annotations on tests.
     (Arpit Agarwal via suresh)
 
+    MAPREDUCE-5177. Use common utils FileUtil#setReadable/Writable/Executable & 
+    FileUtil#canRead/Write/Execute. (Ivan Mitic via suresh)
+
 Release 2.0.5-beta - UNRELEASED
 
   INCOMPATIBLE CHANGES
diff --git a/hadoop-mapreduce-project/hadoop-mapreduce-client/hadoop-mapreduce-client-core/src/main/java/org/apache/hadoop/mapred/pipes/Application.java b/hadoop-mapreduce-project/hadoop-mapreduce-client/hadoop-mapreduce-client-core/src/main/java/org/apache/hadoop/mapred/pipes/Application.java
index 8d4d259237..733ead48e0 100644
--- a/hadoop-mapreduce-project/hadoop-mapreduce-client/hadoop-mapreduce-client-core/src/main/java/org/apache/hadoop/mapred/pipes/Application.java
+++ b/hadoop-mapreduce-project/hadoop-mapreduce-client/hadoop-mapreduce-client-core/src/main/java/org/apache/hadoop/mapred/pipes/Application.java
@@ -113,7 +113,7 @@ class Application<K1 extends WritableComparable, V1 extends Writable,
       cmd.add(interpretor);
     }
     String executable = DistributedCache.getLocalCacheFiles(conf)[0].toString();
-    if (!new File(executable).canExecute()) {
+    if (!FileUtil.canExecute(new File(executable))) {
       // LinuxTaskController sets +x permissions on all distcache files already.
       // In case of DefaultTaskController, set permissions here.
       FileUtil.chmod(executable, "u+x");
diff --git a/hadoop-tools/hadoop-streaming/src/main/java/org/apache/hadoop/streaming/PathFinder.java b/hadoop-tools/hadoop-streaming/src/main/java/org/apache/hadoop/streaming/PathFinder.java
index e39df2ba12..d0010b6b97 100644
--- a/hadoop-tools/hadoop-streaming/src/main/java/org/apache/hadoop/streaming/PathFinder.java
+++ b/hadoop-tools/hadoop-streaming/src/main/java/org/apache/hadoop/streaming/PathFinder.java
@@ -21,6 +21,7 @@
 import java.io.*;
 
 import org.apache.hadoop.classification.InterfaceAudience;
+import org.apache.hadoop.fs.FileUtil;
 
 /**
  * Maps a relative pathname to an absolute pathname using the PATH environment.
@@ -79,7 +80,7 @@ public File getAbsolutePath(String filename) {
         f = new File(entry + fileSep + filename);
       }
       // see if the filename matches and we can read it
-      if (f.isFile() && f.canRead()) {
+      if (f.isFile() && FileUtil.canRead(f)) {
         return f;
       }
       classvalue = classvalue.substring(val + 1).trim();
diff --git a/hadoop-tools/hadoop-streaming/src/main/java/org/apache/hadoop/streaming/StreamJob.java b/hadoop-tools/hadoop-streaming/src/main/java/org/apache/hadoop/streaming/StreamJob.java
index d18a7654e0..c64c0b63b0 100644
--- a/hadoop-tools/hadoop-streaming/src/main/java/org/apache/hadoop/streaming/StreamJob.java
+++ b/hadoop-tools/hadoop-streaming/src/main/java/org/apache/hadoop/streaming/StreamJob.java
@@ -46,6 +46,7 @@
 import org.apache.hadoop.mapreduce.filecache.DistributedCache;
 import org.apache.hadoop.mapreduce.server.jobtracker.JTConfig;
 import org.apache.hadoop.fs.FileSystem;
+import org.apache.hadoop.fs.FileUtil;
 import org.apache.hadoop.fs.Path;
 import org.apache.hadoop.fs.FileAlreadyExistsException;
 import org.apache.hadoop.mapred.FileInputFormat;
@@ -394,7 +395,7 @@ private void validate(final List<String> values)
   throws IllegalArgumentException {
     for (String file : values) {
       File f = new File(file);
-      if (!f.canRead()) {
+      if (!FileUtil.canRead(f)) {
         fail("File: " + f.getAbsolutePath()
           + " does not exist, or is not readable.");
       }