diff --git a/hadoop-mapreduce-project/CHANGES.txt b/hadoop-mapreduce-project/CHANGES.txt
index 6930fcb342..62436d3a4a 100644
--- a/hadoop-mapreduce-project/CHANGES.txt
+++ b/hadoop-mapreduce-project/CHANGES.txt
@@ -1375,6 +1375,9 @@ Release 0.23.0 - Unreleased
     MAPREDUCE-3036. Fixed metrics for reserved resources in CS. (Robert Evans
     via acmurthy)
 
+    MAPREDUCE-2998. Fixed a bug in TaskAttemptImpl which caused it to fork
+    bin/mapred too many times. (vinodkv via acmurthy)
+
 Release 0.22.0 - Unreleased
 
   INCOMPATIBLE CHANGES
diff --git a/hadoop-mapreduce-project/hadoop-mapreduce-client/hadoop-mapreduce-client-app/src/main/java/org/apache/hadoop/mapreduce/v2/app/job/impl/TaskAttemptImpl.java b/hadoop-mapreduce-project/hadoop-mapreduce-client/hadoop-mapreduce-client-app/src/main/java/org/apache/hadoop/mapreduce/v2/app/job/impl/TaskAttemptImpl.java
index cc9f6bddf0..95c344bfbe 100644
--- a/hadoop-mapreduce-project/hadoop-mapreduce-client/hadoop-mapreduce-client-app/src/main/java/org/apache/hadoop/mapreduce/v2/app/job/impl/TaskAttemptImpl.java
+++ b/hadoop-mapreduce-project/hadoop-mapreduce-client/hadoop-mapreduce-client-app/src/main/java/org/apache/hadoop/mapreduce/v2/app/job/impl/TaskAttemptImpl.java
@@ -153,7 +153,7 @@ public abstract class TaskAttemptImpl implements
   private Token<JobTokenIdentifier> jobToken;
   private static AtomicBoolean initialClasspathFlag = new AtomicBoolean();
   private static String initialClasspath = null;
-  private final Object classpathLock = new Object();
+  private static final Object classpathLock = new Object();
   private long launchTime;
   private long finishTime;
   private WrappedProgressSplitsBlock progressSplitBlock;