diff --git a/hadoop-hdfs-project/hadoop-hdfs/CHANGES.HDFS-347.txt b/hadoop-hdfs-project/hadoop-hdfs/CHANGES.HDFS-347.txt
index b067e0c106..faf82389ce 100644
--- a/hadoop-hdfs-project/hadoop-hdfs/CHANGES.HDFS-347.txt
+++ b/hadoop-hdfs-project/hadoop-hdfs/CHANGES.HDFS-347.txt
@@ -37,3 +37,5 @@ HDFS-4417. Fix case where local reads get disabled incorrectly
 HDFS-4433. Make TestPeerCache not flaky (Colin Patrick McCabe via todd)
 
 HDFS-4438. TestDomainSocket fails when system umask is set to 0002. (Colin Patrick McCabe via atm)
+
+HDFS-4440. Avoid annoying log message when dfs.domain.socket.path is not set. (Colin Patrick McCabe via atm)
diff --git a/hadoop-hdfs-project/hadoop-hdfs/src/main/java/org/apache/hadoop/hdfs/DomainSocketFactory.java b/hadoop-hdfs-project/hadoop-hdfs/src/main/java/org/apache/hadoop/hdfs/DomainSocketFactory.java
index 103c946e5e..69a6416dfc 100644
--- a/hadoop-hdfs-project/hadoop-hdfs/src/main/java/org/apache/hadoop/hdfs/DomainSocketFactory.java
+++ b/hadoop-hdfs-project/hadoop-hdfs/src/main/java/org/apache/hadoop/hdfs/DomainSocketFactory.java
@@ -84,7 +84,7 @@ public DomainSocketFactory(Conf conf) {
   DomainSocket create(InetSocketAddress addr, DFSInputStream stream) {
     // If there is no domain socket path configured, we can't use domain
     // sockets.
-    if (conf.domainSocketPath == null) return null;
+    if (conf.domainSocketPath.isEmpty()) return null;
     // UNIX domain sockets can only be used to talk to local peers
     if (!DFSClient.isLocalAddress(addr)) return null;
     // If the DomainSocket code is not loaded, we can't create