diff --git a/CHANGES.txt b/CHANGES.txt
index e20765e969..4b982afd70 100644
--- a/CHANGES.txt
+++ b/CHANGES.txt
@@ -1,6 +1,7 @@
 1.0.0-final
  * Log a miningfull warning when a node receive a message for a repair session
    that don't exist anymore (CASSANDRA-3256)
+ * test for NUMA policy support as well as numactl presence (CASSANDRA-3245)
 
 
 1.0.0-rc1
diff --git a/bin/cassandra b/bin/cassandra
index 4dd249754b..638e41c043 100755
--- a/bin/cassandra
+++ b/bin/cassandra
@@ -91,10 +91,12 @@ fi
 
 # If numactl is available, use it. For Cassandra, the priority is to
 # avoid disk I/O. Even for the purpose of CPU efficiency, we don't
-# really have CPU<->data affinity anyway.
-if which numactl >/dev/null 2>/dev/null
+# really have CPU<->data affinity anyway. Also, empirically test that numactl
+# works before trying to use it (CASSANDRA-3245).
+NUMACTL_ARGS="--interleave=all"
+if which numactl >/dev/null 2>/dev/null && numactl $NUMACTL_ARGS ls / >/dev/null 2>/dev/null
 then
-    NUMACTL="numactl --interleave=all"
+    NUMACTL="numactl $NUMACTL_ARGS"
 else
     NUMACTL=""
 fi