diff --git a/solr/CHANGES.txt b/solr/CHANGES.txt
index 8354c608ab1..9b0bd8ef1a0 100644
--- a/solr/CHANGES.txt
+++ b/solr/CHANGES.txt
@@ -124,6 +124,8 @@ New Features
 * SOLR-1379: Add RAMDirectoryFactory for non-persistent in memory index storage.
   (Alex Baranov via yonik)
 
+* SOLR-1769: Solr 1.4 Replication - Repeater throwing NullPointerException (Jörgen Rydenius via noble)  
+
 
 Optimizations
 ----------------------
diff --git a/solr/src/java/org/apache/solr/handler/ReplicationHandler.java b/solr/src/java/org/apache/solr/handler/ReplicationHandler.java
index 75ba426aeb2..d2ed3698fa4 100644
--- a/solr/src/java/org/apache/solr/handler/ReplicationHandler.java
+++ b/solr/src/java/org/apache/solr/handler/ReplicationHandler.java
@@ -920,7 +920,9 @@ public class ReplicationHandler extends RequestHandlerBase implements SolrCoreAw
         if (getCommit) {
           IndexCommit oldCommitPoint = indexCommitPoint;
           indexCommitPoint = core.getDeletionPolicy().getLatestCommit();
-          core.getDeletionPolicy().saveCommitPoint(indexCommitPoint.getVersion());
+          if (indexCommitPoint != null) {
+            core.getDeletionPolicy().saveCommitPoint(indexCommitPoint.getVersion());
+          }
           if(oldCommitPoint != null){
             core.getDeletionPolicy().releaseCommitPoint(oldCommitPoint.getVersion());
           }