diff --git a/hadoop-common-project/hadoop-common/CHANGES.txt b/hadoop-common-project/hadoop-common/CHANGES.txt
index c74c3048ca..c678938cb4 100644
--- a/hadoop-common-project/hadoop-common/CHANGES.txt
+++ b/hadoop-common-project/hadoop-common/CHANGES.txt
@@ -450,6 +450,9 @@ Release 2.1.0-beta - UNRELEASED
 
     HADOOP-9604. Javadoc of FSDataOutputStream is slightly inaccurate. (Jingguo
     Yao via atm)
+    
+    HADOOP-9625. HADOOP_OPTS not picked up by hadoop command.
+    (Paul Han via arpit)
 
   OPTIMIZATIONS
 
diff --git a/hadoop-common-project/hadoop-common/src/main/conf/hadoop-env.cmd b/hadoop-common-project/hadoop-common/src/main/conf/hadoop-env.cmd
index 08c85d80d4..05badc2020 100644
--- a/hadoop-common-project/hadoop-common/src/main/conf/hadoop-env.cmd
+++ b/hadoop-common-project/hadoop-common/src/main/conf/hadoop-env.cmd
@@ -43,7 +43,7 @@ if exist %HADOOP_HOME%\contrib\capacity-scheduler (
 @rem set HADOOP_NAMENODE_INIT_HEAPSIZE=""
 
 @rem Extra Java runtime options.  Empty by default.
-@rem set HADOOP_OPTS=-Djava.net.preferIPv4Stack=true
+@rem set HADOOP_OPTS=%HADOOP_OPTS% -Djava.net.preferIPv4Stack=true
 
 @rem Command specific options appended to HADOOP_OPTS when specified
 if not defined HADOOP_SECURITY_LOGGER (
diff --git a/hadoop-common-project/hadoop-common/src/main/conf/hadoop-env.sh b/hadoop-common-project/hadoop-common/src/main/conf/hadoop-env.sh
index 3d21526f8d..ecab38bce3 100644
--- a/hadoop-common-project/hadoop-common/src/main/conf/hadoop-env.sh
+++ b/hadoop-common-project/hadoop-common/src/main/conf/hadoop-env.sh
@@ -45,7 +45,7 @@ done
 #export HADOOP_NAMENODE_INIT_HEAPSIZE=""
 
 # Extra Java runtime options.  Empty by default.
-export HADOOP_OPTS="-Djava.net.preferIPv4Stack=true"
+export HADOOP_OPTS="$HADOOP_OPTS -Djava.net.preferIPv4Stack=true"
 
 MAC_OSX=false
 case "`uname`" in