diff --git a/hadoop-common-project/hadoop-common/CHANGES.txt b/hadoop-common-project/hadoop-common/CHANGES.txt
index 8c8491651d3..de1d331e933 100644
--- a/hadoop-common-project/hadoop-common/CHANGES.txt
+++ b/hadoop-common-project/hadoop-common/CHANGES.txt
@@ -249,6 +249,8 @@ Release 0.23.1 - 2012-02-08
    HADOOP-8013. ViewFileSystem does not honor setVerifyChecksum
    (Daryn Sharp via bobby)
 
+   HADOOP-8055. Hadoop tarball distribution lacks a core-site.xml (harsh)
+
 Release 0.23.0 - 2011-11-01 
 
   INCOMPATIBLE CHANGES
diff --git a/hadoop-common-project/hadoop-common/src/main/conf/core-site.xml b/hadoop-common-project/hadoop-common/src/main/conf/core-site.xml
new file mode 100644
index 00000000000..d2ddf893e49
--- /dev/null
+++ b/hadoop-common-project/hadoop-common/src/main/conf/core-site.xml
@@ -0,0 +1,20 @@
+<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
+<?xml-stylesheet type="text/xsl" href="configuration.xsl"?>
+<!--
+  Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the "License");
+  you may not use this file except in compliance with the License.
+  You may obtain a copy of the License at
+
+    http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0
+
+  Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software
+  distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS,
+  WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied.
+  See the License for the specific language governing permissions and
+  limitations under the License. See accompanying LICENSE file.
+-->
+
+<!-- Put site-specific property overrides in this file. -->
+
+<configuration>
+</configuration>