diff --git a/hadoop-hdfs-project/hadoop-hdfs/CHANGES.txt b/hadoop-hdfs-project/hadoop-hdfs/CHANGES.txt
index 4decfd8d889..60825a2be83 100644
--- a/hadoop-hdfs-project/hadoop-hdfs/CHANGES.txt
+++ b/hadoop-hdfs-project/hadoop-hdfs/CHANGES.txt
@@ -693,6 +693,8 @@ Release 2.8.0 - UNRELEASED
     HDFS-3384. DataStreamer thread should be closed immediatly when failed to
     setup a PipelineForAppendOrRecovery (Uma Maheswara Rao G via vinayakumarb)
 
+    HDFS-6285. tidy an error log inside BlockReceiver. (Liang Xie via umamahesh)
+
 Release 2.7.1 - UNRELEASED
 
   INCOMPATIBLE CHANGES
diff --git a/hadoop-hdfs-project/hadoop-hdfs/src/main/java/org/apache/hadoop/hdfs/server/datanode/BlockReceiver.java b/hadoop-hdfs-project/hadoop-hdfs/src/main/java/org/apache/hadoop/hdfs/server/datanode/BlockReceiver.java
index 90e21949b54..2e1160049f9 100644
--- a/hadoop-hdfs-project/hadoop-hdfs/src/main/java/org/apache/hadoop/hdfs/server/datanode/BlockReceiver.java
+++ b/hadoop-hdfs-project/hadoop-hdfs/src/main/java/org/apache/hadoop/hdfs/server/datanode/BlockReceiver.java
@@ -262,8 +262,8 @@ class BlockReceiver implements Closeable {
       
       // check if there is a disk error
       IOException cause = DatanodeUtil.getCauseIfDiskError(ioe);
-      DataNode.LOG.warn("IOException in BlockReceiver constructor. Cause is ",
-          cause);
+      DataNode.LOG.warn("IOException in BlockReceiver constructor"
+          + (cause == null ? "" : ". Cause is "), cause);
       
       if (cause != null) { // possible disk error
         ioe = cause;