diff --git a/hbase-server/src/main/java/org/apache/hadoop/hbase/mapreduce/TableMapReduceUtil.java b/hbase-server/src/main/java/org/apache/hadoop/hbase/mapreduce/TableMapReduceUtil.java
index ebe7d36894e..b5149415a5e 100644
--- a/hbase-server/src/main/java/org/apache/hadoop/hbase/mapreduce/TableMapReduceUtil.java
+++ b/hbase-server/src/main/java/org/apache/hadoop/hbase/mapreduce/TableMapReduceUtil.java
@@ -900,25 +900,28 @@ public class TableMapReduceUtil {
   private static String findContainingJar(Class<?> my_class, Map<String, String> packagedClasses)
       throws IOException {
     ClassLoader loader = my_class.getClassLoader();
+
     String class_file = my_class.getName().replaceAll("\\.", "/") + ".class";
 
-    // first search the classpath
-    for (Enumeration<URL> itr = loader.getResources(class_file); itr.hasMoreElements();) {
-      URL url = itr.nextElement();
-      if ("jar".equals(url.getProtocol())) {
-        String toReturn = url.getPath();
-        if (toReturn.startsWith("file:")) {
-          toReturn = toReturn.substring("file:".length());
+    if (loader != null) {
+      // first search the classpath
+      for (Enumeration<URL> itr = loader.getResources(class_file); itr.hasMoreElements();) {
+        URL url = itr.nextElement();
+        if ("jar".equals(url.getProtocol())) {
+          String toReturn = url.getPath();
+          if (toReturn.startsWith("file:")) {
+            toReturn = toReturn.substring("file:".length());
+          }
+          // URLDecoder is a misnamed class, since it actually decodes
+          // x-www-form-urlencoded MIME type rather than actual
+          // URL encoding (which the file path has). Therefore it would
+          // decode +s to ' 's which is incorrect (spaces are actually
+          // either unencoded or encoded as "%20"). Replace +s first, so
+          // that they are kept sacred during the decoding process.
+          toReturn = toReturn.replaceAll("\\+", "%2B");
+          toReturn = URLDecoder.decode(toReturn, "UTF-8");
+          return toReturn.replaceAll("!.*$", "");
         }
-        // URLDecoder is a misnamed class, since it actually decodes
-        // x-www-form-urlencoded MIME type rather than actual
-        // URL encoding (which the file path has). Therefore it would
-        // decode +s to ' 's which is incorrect (spaces are actually
-        // either unencoded or encoded as "%20"). Replace +s first, so
-        // that they are kept sacred during the decoding process.
-        toReturn = toReturn.replaceAll("\\+", "%2B");
-        toReturn = URLDecoder.decode(toReturn, "UTF-8");
-        return toReturn.replaceAll("!.*$", "");
       }
     }