diff --git a/hadoop-common-project/hadoop-common/CHANGES.txt b/hadoop-common-project/hadoop-common/CHANGES.txt
index 8e8aa0b70c..c1f8d39511 100644
--- a/hadoop-common-project/hadoop-common/CHANGES.txt
+++ b/hadoop-common-project/hadoop-common/CHANGES.txt
@@ -429,6 +429,9 @@ Release 2.1.1-beta - UNRELEASED
     HADOOP-9887. globStatus does not correctly handle paths starting with a drive
     spec on Windows. (Chuan Liu via cnauroth)
 
+    HADOOP-9894.  Race condition in Shell leads to logged error stream handling
+    exceptions (Arpit Agarwal)
+
 Release 2.1.0-beta - 2013-08-22
 
   INCOMPATIBLE CHANGES
diff --git a/hadoop-common-project/hadoop-common/src/main/java/org/apache/hadoop/util/Shell.java b/hadoop-common-project/hadoop-common/src/main/java/org/apache/hadoop/util/Shell.java
index 0a8ce2e998..9f6fcc2125 100644
--- a/hadoop-common-project/hadoop-common/src/main/java/org/apache/hadoop/util/Shell.java
+++ b/hadoop-common-project/hadoop-common/src/main/java/org/apache/hadoop/util/Shell.java
@@ -515,8 +515,13 @@ public void run() {
       } catch (IOException ioe) {
         LOG.warn("Error while closing the input stream", ioe);
       }
-      if (!completed.get()) {
-        errThread.interrupt();
+      try {
+        if (!completed.get()) {
+          errThread.interrupt();
+          errThread.join();
+        }
+      } catch (InterruptedException ie) {
+        LOG.warn("Interrupted while joining errThread");
       }
       try {
         errReader.close();