diff --git a/hadoop-common-project/hadoop-common/CHANGES.txt b/hadoop-common-project/hadoop-common/CHANGES.txt
index a7d2c91bc8c..d083c1ec907 100644
--- a/hadoop-common-project/hadoop-common/CHANGES.txt
+++ b/hadoop-common-project/hadoop-common/CHANGES.txt
@@ -138,6 +138,9 @@ Release 2.0.5-beta - UNRELEASED
     HADOOP-9504. MetricsDynamicMBeanBase has concurrency issues in
     createMBeanInfo (Liang Xie via jlowe)
 
+    HADOOP-9455. HADOOP_CLIENT_OPTS appended twice causes JVM failures.
+    (Chris Nauroth via suresh)
+
 Release 2.0.4-alpha - UNRELEASED
 
   INCOMPATIBLE CHANGES
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 665d93a8655..e63c8fbf16c 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 $HADOOP_CLIENT_OPTS"
+export HADOOP_OPTS="-Djava.net.preferIPv4Stack=true"
 
 # Command specific options appended to HADOOP_OPTS when specified
 export HADOOP_NAMENODE_OPTS="-Dhadoop.security.logger=${HADOOP_SECURITY_LOGGER:-INFO,RFAS} -Dhdfs.audit.logger=${HDFS_AUDIT_LOGGER:-INFO,NullAppender} $HADOOP_NAMENODE_OPTS"