diff --git a/hadoop-mapreduce-project/CHANGES.txt b/hadoop-mapreduce-project/CHANGES.txt
index 8356c9fb6a8..d94967010a5 100644
--- a/hadoop-mapreduce-project/CHANGES.txt
+++ b/hadoop-mapreduce-project/CHANGES.txt
@@ -35,6 +35,8 @@ Release 0.23.3 - UNRELEASED
     MAPREDUCE-2942. TestNMAuditLogger.testNMAuditLoggerWithIP failing (Thomas
     Graves via mahadev)
 
+    MAPREDUCE-3933. Failures because MALLOC_ARENA_MAX is not set (ahmed via tucu)
+
 Release 0.23.2 - UNRELEASED
 
   INCOMPATIBLE CHANGES
diff --git a/hadoop-mapreduce-project/hadoop-yarn/hadoop-yarn-applications/hadoop-yarn-applications-distributedshell/pom.xml b/hadoop-mapreduce-project/hadoop-yarn/hadoop-yarn-applications/hadoop-yarn-applications-distributedshell/pom.xml
index cc58a34beff..378f4089e77 100644
--- a/hadoop-mapreduce-project/hadoop-yarn/hadoop-yarn-applications/hadoop-yarn-applications-distributedshell/pom.xml
+++ b/hadoop-mapreduce-project/hadoop-yarn/hadoop-yarn-applications/hadoop-yarn-applications-distributedshell/pom.xml
@@ -104,7 +104,6 @@
         <configuration>
           <environmentVariables>
             <JAVA_HOME>${java.home}</JAVA_HOME>
-            <MALLOC_ARENA_MAX>4</MALLOC_ARENA_MAX>
           </environmentVariables>
        </configuration>
       </plugin>
diff --git a/hadoop-project/pom.xml b/hadoop-project/pom.xml
index 9d79113e8fc..8b076636479 100644
--- a/hadoop-project/pom.xml
+++ b/hadoop-project/pom.xml
@@ -833,6 +833,7 @@
           <argLine>-Xmx1024m</argLine>
           <environmentVariables>
             <LD_LIBRARY_PATH>${env.LD_LIBRARY_PATH}:${project.build.directory}/native/target/usr/local/lib</LD_LIBRARY_PATH>
+            <MALLOC_ARENA_MAX>4</MALLOC_ARENA_MAX>
           </environmentVariables>
           <systemPropertyVariables>