diff --git a/CHANGES.txt b/CHANGES.txt
index a1bea11f3da..985a464f766 100644
--- a/CHANGES.txt
+++ b/CHANGES.txt
@@ -439,6 +439,8 @@ Release 0.92.0 - Unreleased
                time we issued bulk user region close call on our way out
    HBASE-4815  Disable online altering by default, create a config for it
    HBASE-4623  Remove @deprecated Scan methods in 0.90 from TRUNK and 0.92
+   HBASE-4842  [hbck] Fix intermittent failures on TestHBaseFsck.testHBaseFsck
+               (Jon Hsieh)
 
   TESTS
    HBASE-4450  test for number of blocks read: to serve as baseline for expected
diff --git a/src/test/java/org/apache/hadoop/hbase/util/TestHBaseFsck.java b/src/test/java/org/apache/hadoop/hbase/util/TestHBaseFsck.java
index af1e207d473..0b6accef3ca 100644
--- a/src/test/java/org/apache/hadoop/hbase/util/TestHBaseFsck.java
+++ b/src/test/java/org/apache/hadoop/hbase/util/TestHBaseFsck.java
@@ -66,6 +66,7 @@ public class TestHBaseFsck {
   
   @BeforeClass
   public static void setUpBeforeClass() throws Exception {
+    TEST_UTIL.getConfiguration().setBoolean("hbase.master.distributed.log.splitting", false);
     TEST_UTIL.startMiniCluster(3);
   }
 
@@ -116,6 +117,11 @@ public class TestHBaseFsck {
     assertErrors(doFsck(conf, true), new ERROR_CODE[]{
         ERROR_CODE.SERVER_DOES_NOT_MATCH_META});
 
+    // fixing assignements require opening regions is not synchronous.  To make
+    // the test pass consistentyl so for now we bake in some sleep to let it
+    // finish.  1s seems sufficient.
+    Thread.sleep(1000);
+
     // Should be fixed now
     assertNoErrors(doFsck(conf, false));