You could try:

hadoop fs -put /path/in/linux /hdfs/path

or even

hadoop fs -copyFromLocal /path/in/linux /hdfs/path

By default both put and copyFromLocal would upload directories recursively to HDFS.

In Short

hdfs dfs -put <localsrc> <dest>

In detail with an example:

Checking source and target before placing files into HDFS

[cloudera@quickstart ~]$ ll files/total 132-rwxrwxr-x 1 cloudera cloudera  5387 Nov 14 06:33 cloudera-manager-rwxrwxr-x 1 cloudera cloudera  9964 Nov 14 06:33 cm_api.py-rw-rw-r-- 1 cloudera cloudera   664 Nov 14 06:33 derby.log-rw-rw-r-- 1 cloudera cloudera 53655 Nov 14 06:33 enterprise-deployment.json-rw-rw-r-- 1 cloudera cloudera 50515 Nov 14 06:33 express-deployment.json[cloudera@quickstart ~]$ hdfs dfs -lsFound 1 itemsdrwxr-xr-x   - cloudera cloudera          0 2017-11-14 00:45 .sparkStaging

Copy files HDFS using -put or -copyFromLocal command

[cloudera@quickstart ~]$ hdfs dfs -put files/ files

Verify the result in HDFS

[cloudera@quickstart ~]$ hdfs dfs -lsFound 2 itemsdrwxr-xr-x   - cloudera cloudera          0 2017-11-14 00:45 .sparkStagingdrwxr-xr-x   - cloudera cloudera          0 2017-11-14 06:34 files[cloudera@quickstart ~]$ hdfs dfs -ls filesFound 5 items-rw-r--r--   1 cloudera cloudera       5387 2017-11-14 06:34 files/cloudera-manager-rw-r--r--   1 cloudera cloudera       9964 2017-11-14 06:34 files/cm_api.py-rw-r--r--   1 cloudera cloudera        664 2017-11-14 06:34 files/derby.log-rw-r--r--   1 cloudera cloudera      53655 2017-11-14 06:34 files/enterprise-deployment.json-rw-r--r--   1 cloudera cloudera      50515 2017-11-14 06:34 files/express-deployment.json

If you copy a folder from local then it will copy folder with all its sub folders to HDFS.

For copying a folder from local to hdfs, you can use

hadoop fs -put localpath

or

hadoop fs -copyFromLocal localpath

or

hadoop fs -put localpath hdfspath

or

hadoop fs -copyFromLocal localpath hdfspath

Note:

If you are not specified hdfs path then folder copy will be copy to hdfs with the same name of that folder.

To copy from hdfs to local

 hadoop fs -get hdfspath localpath