diff --git a/hadoop-common-project/hadoop-common/CHANGES.txt b/hadoop-common-project/hadoop-common/CHANGES.txt
index ed4bb945d4..dc9ad36440 100644
--- a/hadoop-common-project/hadoop-common/CHANGES.txt
+++ b/hadoop-common-project/hadoop-common/CHANGES.txt
@@ -292,6 +292,9 @@ Release 0.23.1 - Unreleased
    HADOOP-7981. Improve documentation for org.apache.hadoop.io.compress.
    Decompressor.getRemaining (Jonathan Eagles via mahadev)
 
+   HADOOP-7997. SequenceFile.createWriter(...createParent...) no
+   longer works on existing file. (Gregory Chanan via eli)
+
 Release 0.23.0 - 2011-11-01 
 
   INCOMPATIBLE CHANGES
diff --git a/hadoop-common-project/hadoop-common/src/main/java/org/apache/hadoop/io/SequenceFile.java b/hadoop-common-project/hadoop-common/src/main/java/org/apache/hadoop/io/SequenceFile.java
index a64bd1bf9e..476eaeb14b 100644
--- a/hadoop-common-project/hadoop-common/src/main/java/org/apache/hadoop/io/SequenceFile.java
+++ b/hadoop-common-project/hadoop-common/src/main/java/org/apache/hadoop/io/SequenceFile.java
@@ -467,7 +467,7 @@ public static Writer createWriter(Configuration conf, Writer.Option... opts
                Metadata metadata) throws IOException {
     return createWriter(FileContext.getFileContext(fs.getUri(), conf),
         conf, name, keyClass, valClass, compressionType, codec,
-        metadata, EnumSet.of(CreateFlag.CREATE),
+        metadata, EnumSet.of(CreateFlag.CREATE,CreateFlag.OVERWRITE),
         CreateOpts.bufferSize(bufferSize),
         createParent ? CreateOpts.createParent()
                      : CreateOpts.donotCreateParent(),
diff --git a/hadoop-common-project/hadoop-common/src/test/java/org/apache/hadoop/io/TestSequenceFile.java b/hadoop-common-project/hadoop-common/src/test/java/org/apache/hadoop/io/TestSequenceFile.java
index 18bc8df651..58998be8e6 100644
--- a/hadoop-common-project/hadoop-common/src/test/java/org/apache/hadoop/io/TestSequenceFile.java
+++ b/hadoop-common-project/hadoop-common/src/test/java/org/apache/hadoop/io/TestSequenceFile.java
@@ -517,6 +517,23 @@ protected FSDataInputStream openFile(FileSystem fs, Path file, int bufferSize, l
     assertTrue("InputStream for " + path + " should have been closed.", openedFile[0].isClosed());
   }
 
+   /**
+   * Test that makes sure createWriter succeeds on a file that was 
+   * already created
+   * @throws IOException
+   */
+  public void testCreateWriterOnExistingFile() throws IOException {
+    Configuration conf = new Configuration();
+    FileSystem fs = FileSystem.getLocal(conf);
+    Path name = new Path(new Path(System.getProperty("test.build.data","."),
+        "createWriterOnExistingFile") , "file");
+
+    fs.create(name);
+    SequenceFile.createWriter(fs, conf, name, RandomDatum.class,
+        RandomDatum.class, 512, (short) 1, 4096, false,
+        CompressionType.NONE, null, new Metadata());
+  }
+
   public void testRecursiveSeqFileCreate() throws IOException {
     Configuration conf = new Configuration();
     FileSystem fs = FileSystem.getLocal(conf);