diff --git a/.gitignore b/.gitignore
index e5a919d7e7..f223254b16 100644
--- a/.gitignore
+++ b/.gitignore
@@ -7,3 +7,4 @@
 .project
 .settings
 target
+hadoop-hdfs-project/hadoop-hdfs/downloads
diff --git a/hadoop-hdfs-project/hadoop-hdfs/CHANGES.txt b/hadoop-hdfs-project/hadoop-hdfs/CHANGES.txt
index a7fe03c257..e2b5ebcd66 100644
--- a/hadoop-hdfs-project/hadoop-hdfs/CHANGES.txt
+++ b/hadoop-hdfs-project/hadoop-hdfs/CHANGES.txt
@@ -63,6 +63,8 @@ Trunk (unreleased changes)
 
 	HDFS-2181 Separate HDFS Client wire protocol data types (sanjay)
 
+    HDFS-2294. Download of commons-daemon TAR should not be under target (tucu)
+
   BUG FIXES
     HDFS-2287. TestParallelRead has a small off-by-one bug. (todd)
 
diff --git a/hadoop-hdfs-project/hadoop-hdfs/pom.xml b/hadoop-hdfs-project/hadoop-hdfs/pom.xml
index f6f91c44c1..3fba5b79fe 100644
--- a/hadoop-hdfs-project/hadoop-hdfs/pom.xml
+++ b/hadoop-hdfs-project/hadoop-hdfs/pom.xml
@@ -329,16 +329,15 @@
                 </condition>
                 <property name="commons.daemon.tar.name"
                           value="commons-daemon-${commons-daemon.version}-bin-${commons.daemon.os.name}-${commons.daemon.os.arch}.tar.gz"/>
-               
-                <property name="commons.daemon.download.dir"
-                          value="${project.build.directory}/downloads/commons-daemon"/>
-                <delete dir="${commons.daemon.download.dir}"/>
-                <mkdir dir="${commons.daemon.download.dir}"/>
+                
+                <mkdir dir="downloads"/>
                 <get src="http://archive.apache.org/dist/commons/daemon/binaries/${commons-daemon.version}/${commons.daemon.os.name}/${commons.daemon.tar.name}"
-                    dest="${commons.daemon.download.dir}/${commons.daemon.tar.name}" verbose="true" skipexisting="true"/>
-                <untar compression="gzip" src="${commons.daemon.download.dir}/${commons.daemon.tar.name}"
-                       dest="${commons.daemon.download.dir}"/>
-                <copy file="${commons.daemon.download.dir}/jsvc"
+                    dest="downloads/${commons.daemon.tar.name}" verbose="true" skipexisting="true"/>
+                <delete dir="${project.build.directory}/commons-daemon.staging"/>
+                <mkdir dir="${project.build.directory}/commons-daemon.staging"/>
+                <untar compression="gzip" src="${basedir}/downloads/${commons.daemon.tar.name}"
+                       dest="${project.build.directory}/commons-daemon.staging"/>
+                <copy file="${project.build.directory}/commons-daemon.staging/jsvc"
                       todir="${project.build.directory}/${project.artifactId}-${project.version}/libexec"
                       verbose="true"/>
                 <chmod perm="ugo+x" type="file">