diff --git a/CHANGES b/CHANGES
index 75128e41f..0dbdbeedd 100644
--- a/CHANGES
+++ b/CHANGES
@@ -6,6 +6,10 @@
 
                                   Changelog
 
+Daniel (13 January 2006)
+- Andrew Benham fixed a race condition in the test suite that could cause the
+  test script to kill all processes in the current process group!
+
 Daniel (12 January 2006)
 - Michael Jahn:
 
diff --git a/RELEASE-NOTES b/RELEASE-NOTES
index e54158989..d90e31210 100644
--- a/RELEASE-NOTES
+++ b/RELEASE-NOTES
@@ -15,6 +15,7 @@ This release includes the following changes:
 
 This release includes the following bugfixes:
 
+ o test suite kill race condition
  o FTP_SKIP_PASV_IP and FTP_USE_EPSV when doing FTP over HTTP proxy
  o Doing a second request with FTP on the same bath path, would make libcurl
    confuse what current working directory it had
@@ -36,6 +37,6 @@ This release would not have looked like this without help, code, reports and
 advice from friends like these:
 
  Dov Murik, Jean Jacques Drouin, Andres Garcia, Yang Tse, Gisle Vanem, Dan
- Fandrich, Alexander Lazic, Michael Jahn
+ Fandrich, Alexander Lazic, Michael Jahn, Andrew Benham
  
         Thanks! (and sorry if I forgot to mention someone)
diff --git a/tests/runtests.pl b/tests/runtests.pl
index e4a7b1071..a982dc712 100755
--- a/tests/runtests.pl
+++ b/tests/runtests.pl
@@ -249,9 +249,10 @@ sub startnew {
             open(PID, "<$pidfile");
             $pid2 = 0 + <PID>;
             close(PID);
-            if(kill(0, $pid2)) {
-                # make sure this pid is alive, as otherwise it is just likely
-                # to be the _previous_ pidfile or similar!
+            if($pid2 && kill(0, $pid2)) {
+                # if $pid2 is valid, then make sure this pid is alive, as
+                # otherwise it is just likely to be the _previous_ pidfile or
+                # similar!
                 last;
             }
         }