diff --git a/CHANGES.txt b/CHANGES.txt
index 5abb73a..d58a2fa 100644
--- a/CHANGES.txt
+++ b/CHANGES.txt
@@ -42,6 +42,8 @@
     MAPREDUCE-1929. Allow artifacts to be published to the staging Apache Nexus
     Maven Repository. (tomwhite)
 
+    MAPREDUCE-2317. Fix a NPE in HadoopArchives.  (Devaraj K via szetszwo)
+
 Release 0.21.0 - 2010-08-13
 
   INCOMPATIBLE CHANGES
diff --git a/src/tools/org/apache/hadoop/tools/HadoopArchives.java b/src/tools/org/apache/hadoop/tools/HadoopArchives.java
index 3f757c7..f2ebc6e 100644
--- a/src/tools/org/apache/hadoop/tools/HadoopArchives.java
+++ b/src/tools/org/apache/hadoop/tools/HadoopArchives.java
@@ -368,16 +368,18 @@
         }
         else {
           Path parent = p.getParent();
-          if (allpaths.containsKey(parent.toString())) {
-            HashSet<String> children = allpaths.get(parent.toString());
-            children.add(p.getName());
+          if (null != parent) {
+            if (allpaths.containsKey(parent.toString())) {
+              HashSet<String> children = allpaths.get(parent.toString());
+              children.add(p.getName());
+            } 
+            else {
+              HashSet<String> children = new HashSet<String>();
+              children.add(p.getName());
+              allpaths.put(parent.toString(), children);
+            }
+            parents.add(parent);
           }
-          else {
-            HashSet<String> children = new HashSet<String>();
-            children.add(p.getName());
-            allpaths.put(parent.toString(), children);
-          }
-          parents.add(parent);
         }
       }
       justDirs = parents;