diff --git a/hadoop-hdfs-project/hadoop-hdfs/CHANGES.txt b/hadoop-hdfs-project/hadoop-hdfs/CHANGES.txt
index fa46fba6c70..569dfe87a09 100644
--- a/hadoop-hdfs-project/hadoop-hdfs/CHANGES.txt
+++ b/hadoop-hdfs-project/hadoop-hdfs/CHANGES.txt
@@ -216,6 +216,9 @@ Release 2.0.5-beta - UNRELEASED
     HDFS-4768. File handle leak in datanode when a block pool is removed.
     (Chris Nauroth via suresh)
 
+    HDFS-4748. MiniJournalCluster#restartJournalNode leaks resources, which 
+    causes sporadic test failures. (Chris Nauroth via suresh)
+
 Release 2.0.4-alpha - UNRELEASED
 
   INCOMPATIBLE CHANGES
diff --git a/hadoop-hdfs-project/hadoop-hdfs/src/test/java/org/apache/hadoop/hdfs/qjournal/MiniJournalCluster.java b/hadoop-hdfs-project/hadoop-hdfs/src/test/java/org/apache/hadoop/hdfs/qjournal/MiniJournalCluster.java
index 840f4939aeb..ee1c320a7c6 100644
--- a/hadoop-hdfs-project/hadoop-hdfs/src/test/java/org/apache/hadoop/hdfs/qjournal/MiniJournalCluster.java
+++ b/hadoop-hdfs-project/hadoop-hdfs/src/test/java/org/apache/hadoop/hdfs/qjournal/MiniJournalCluster.java
@@ -178,9 +178,9 @@ public class MiniJournalCluster {
     conf.set(DFSConfigKeys.DFS_JOURNALNODE_HTTP_ADDRESS_KEY, "127.0.0.1:" +
         httpAddrs[i].getPort());
     
-    JournalNode jn = new JournalNode();
-    jn.setConf(conf);
-    jn.start();
+    nodes[i] = new JournalNode();
+    nodes[i].setConf(conf);
+    nodes[i].start();
   }
 
   public int getQuorumSize() {