You are missing the agent .sources property. How does Flumm-ng work without knowing the source? You are missing the next line.
TwitterAgent.sources = Twitter
See the source , channel and sink relationship diagram. 
See the following link for details: https://flume.apache.org/FlumeUserGuide.html
Always remember that there are basically three things in the tray configuration file (sources, channels, drains). The first three lines set these three properties.
TwitterAgent.sources = Twitter TwitterAgent.sinks = HDFS TwitterAgent.channels = MemChannel
The rest of the configuration file sets the detailed properties of these three basic things ( sources , channels , sinks ).
Check below the corrected contents of the configuration file.
TwitterAgent.sources = Twitter TwitterAgent.channels = MemChannel TwitterAgent.sinks = HDFS #TwitterAgent.sources.Twitter.type = com.cloudera.flume.source.TwitterSource TwitterAgent.sources.Twitter.type = org.apache.flume.source.twitter.TwitterSource TwitterAgent.sources.Twitter.channels = MemChannel TwitterAgent.sources.Twitter.consumerKey = xxxxx TwitterAgent.sources.Twitter.consumerSecret = xxxxxx TwitterAgent.sources.Twitter.accessToken = xxxxx TwitterAgent.sources.Twitter.accessTokenSecret = xxxxx TwitterAgent.sources.Twitter.keywords = hadoop, big data, analytics, bigdata, cloudera, data science, data scientiest, business intelligence, mapreduce, data warehouse, data warehousing, mahout, hbase, nosql, newsql, businessintelligence, cloudcomputing TwitterAgent.sinks.HDFS.channel = MemChannel TwitterAgent.sinks.HDFS.type = hdfs TwitterAgent.sinks.HDFS.hdfs.path = hdfs://uat.cloudera:8020/user/root/flume/ TwitterAgent.sinks.HDFS.hdfs.fileType = DataStream TwitterAgent.sinks.HDFS.hdfs.writeFormat = Text TwitterAgent.sinks.HDFS.hdfs.batchSize = 10 TwitterAgent.sinks.HDFS.hdfs.rollSize = 0 TwitterAgent.sinks.HDFS.hdfs.rollCount = 10 TwitterAgent.channels.MemChannel.type = memory TwitterAgent.channels.MemChannel.capacity = 10 TwitterAgent.channels.MemChannel.transactionCapacity = 10
Besides setting the sources property, I also changed the properties below so that we can quickly see the results in hdfs as temporary files.
TwitterAgent.sinks.HDFS.hdfs.batchSize = 10 TwitterAgent.sinks.HDFS.hdfs.rollCount = 10 TwitterAgent.channels.MemChannel.capacity = 10 TwitterAgent.channels.MemChannel.transactionCapacity = 10
Copy the contents and save it in any configuration file, for example sample.conf in the folder / etc / flume -ng / conf /, and then use the command below.
flume-ng agent -c /etc/flume-ng/conf -f /etc/flume-ng/conf/sample.conf -n TwitterAgent -Dflume.root.logger=INFO,console
After the status of HDFS Started, it should display a processed message like this.
2015-09-25 13:44:18,045 (lifecycleSupervisor-1-4) [INFO - org.apache.flume.source.twitter.TwitterSource.start(TwitterSource.java:139)] Twitter source Twitter started. 2015-09-25 13:44:18,045 (Twitter Stream consumer-1[initializing]) [INFO - twitter4j.internal.logging.SLF4JLogger.info(SLF4JLogger.java:83)] Establishing connection. 2015-09-25 13:44:19,931 (Twitter Stream consumer-1[Establishing connection]) [INFO - twitter4j.internal.logging.SLF4JLogger.info(SLF4JLogger.java:83)] Connection established. 2015-09-25 13:44:19,931 (Twitter Stream consumer-1[Establishing connection]) [INFO - twitter4j.internal.logging.SLF4JLogger.info(SLF4JLogger.java:83)] Receiving status stream. 2015-09-25 13:44:20,283 (SinkRunner-PollingRunner-DefaultSinkProcessor) [INFO - org.apache.flume.sink.hdfs.HDFSDataStream.configure(HDFSDataStream.java:58)] Serializer = TEXT, UseRawLocalFileSystem = false 2015-09-25 13:44:20,557 (SinkRunner-PollingRunner-DefaultSinkProcessor) [INFO - org.apache.flume.sink.hdfs.BucketWriter.open(BucketWriter.java:261)] Creating hdfs://uat.cloudera:8020/user/root/flume/FlumeData.1443213860284.tmp 2015-09-25 13:44:22,435 (Twitter4J Async Dispatcher[0]) [INFO - org.apache.flume.source.twitter.TwitterSource.onStatus(TwitterSource.java:178)] Processed 100 docs 2015-09-25 13:44:25,383 (Twitter4J Async Dispatcher[0]) [INFO - org.apache.flume.source.twitter.TwitterSource.onStatus(TwitterSource.java:178)] Processed 200 docs 2015-09-25 13:44:28,178 (Twitter4J Async Dispatcher[0]) [INFO - org.apache.flume.source.twitter.TwitterSource.onStatus(TwitterSource.java:178)] Processed 300 docs 2015-09-25 13:44:30,505 (SinkRunner-PollingRunner-DefaultSinkProcessor) [INFO - org.apache.flume.sink.hdfs.BucketWriter.close(BucketWriter.java:413)] Closing hdfs://uat.cloudera:8020/user/root/flume/FlumeData.1443213860284.tmp 2015-09-25 13:44:30,506 (hdfs-HDFS-call-runner-2) [INFO - org.apache.flume.sink.hdfs.BucketWriter$3.call(BucketWriter.java:339)] Close tries incremented 2015-09-25 13:44:30,526 (hdfs-HDFS-call-runner-3) [INFO - org.apache.flume.sink.hdfs.BucketWriter$8.call(BucketWriter.java:673)] Renaming hdfs://uat.cloudera:8020/user/root/flume/FlumeData.1443213860284.tmp to hdfs://uat.cloudera:8020/user/root/flume/FlumeData.1443213860284 2015-09-25 13:44:30,607 (SinkRunner-PollingRunner-DefaultSinkProcessor) [INFO - org.apache.flume.sink.hdfs.BucketWriter.open(BucketWriter.java:261)] Creating hdfs://uat.cloudera:8020/user/root/flume/FlumeData.1443213860285.tmp 2015-09-25 13:44:31,157 (Twitter4J Async Dispatcher[0]) [INFO - org.apache.flume.source.twitter.TwitterSource.onStatus(TwitterSource.java:178)] Processed 400 docs 2015-09-25 13:44:33,330 (Twitter4J Async Dispatcher[0]) [INFO - org.apache.flume.source.twitter.TwitterSource.onStatus(TwitterSource.java:178)] Processed 500 docs 2015-09-25 13:44:36,131 (Twitter4J Async Dispatcher[0]) [INFO - org.apache.flume.source.twitter.TwitterSource.onStatus(TwitterSource.java:178)] Processed 600 docs 2015-09-25 13:44:38,298 (Twitter4J Async Dispatcher[0]) [INFO - org.apache.flume.source.twitter.TwitterSource.onStatus(TwitterSource.java:178)] Processed 700 docs 2015-09-25 13:44:40,465 (Twitter4J Async Dispatcher[0]) [INFO - org.apache.flume.source.twitter.TwitterSource.onStatus(TwitterSource.java:178)] Processed 800 docs 2015-09-25 13:44:41,158 (SinkRunner-PollingRunner-DefaultSinkProcessor) [INFO - org.apache.flume.sink.hdfs.BucketWriter.close(BucketWriter.java:413)] Closing hdfs://uat.cloudera:8020/user/root/flume/FlumeData.1443213860285.tmp 2015-09-25 13:44:41,158 (hdfs-HDFS-call-runner-6) [INFO - org.apache.flume.sink.hdfs.BucketWriter$3.call(BucketWriter.java:339)] Close tries incremented 2015-09-25 13:44:41,166 (hdfs-HDFS-call-runner-7) [INFO - org.apache.flume.sink.hdfs.BucketWriter$8.call(BucketWriter.java:673)] Renaming hdfs://uat.cloudera:8020/user/root/flume/FlumeData.1443213860285.tmp to hdfs://uat.cloudera:8020/user/root/flume/FlumeData.1443213860285 2015-09-25 13:44:41,230 (SinkRunner-PollingRunner-DefaultSinkProcessor) [INFO - org.apache.flume.sink.hdfs.BucketWriter.open(BucketWriter.java:261)] Creating hdfs://uat.cloudera:8020/user/root/flume/FlumeData.1443213860286.tmp 2015-09-25 13:44:43,238 (Twitter4J Async Dispatcher[0]) [INFO - org.apache.flume.source.twitter.TwitterSource.onStatus(TwitterSource.java:178)] Processed 900 docs 2015-09-25 13:44:46,118 (Twitter4J Async Dispatcher[0]) [INFO - org.apache.flume.source.twitter.TwitterSource.onStatus(TwitterSource.java:178)] Processed 1,000 docs 2015-09-25 13:44:46,118 (Twitter4J Async Dispatcher[0]) [INFO - org.apache.flume.source.twitter.TwitterSource.logStats(TwitterSource.java:300)] Total docs indexed: 1,000, total skipped docs: 0 2015-09-25 13:44:46,118 (Twitter4J Async Dispatcher[0]) [INFO - org.apache.flume.source.twitter.TwitterSource.logStats(TwitterSource.java:302)] 35 docs/second 2015-09-25 13:44:46,118 (Twitter4J Async Dispatcher[0]) [INFO - org.apache.flume.source.twitter.TwitterSource.logStats(TwitterSource.java:304)] Run took 28 seconds and processed: 2015-09-25 13:44:46,118 (Twitter4J Async Dispatcher[0]) [INFO - org.apache.flume.source.twitter.TwitterSource.logStats(TwitterSource.java:306)] 0.009 MB/sec sent to index 2015-09-25 13:44:46,119 (Twitter4J Async Dispatcher[0]) [INFO - org.apache.flume.source.twitter.TwitterSource.logStats(TwitterSource.java:308)] 0.255 MB text sent to index 2015-09-25 13:44:46,119 (Twitter4J Async Dispatcher[0]) [INFO - org.apache.flume.source.twitter.TwitterSource.logStats(TwitterSource.java:310)] There were 0 exceptions ignored: ^C2015-09-25 13:44:46,666 (agent-shutdown-hook) [INFO - org.apache.flume.lifecycle.LifecycleSupervisor.stop(LifecycleSupervisor.java:79)] Stopping lifecycle supervisor 10 2015-09-25 13:44:46,673 (agent-shutdown-hook) [INFO - org.apache.flume.source.twitter.TwitterSource.stop(TwitterSource.java:150)] Twitter source Twitter stopping...
Let me know if your problem is still resolved.