diff --git a/CHANGES.txt b/CHANGES.txt
index 159979f6df..f2fc9ae8f8 100644
--- a/CHANGES.txt
+++ b/CHANGES.txt
@@ -66,6 +66,7 @@
  * Fix snapshot repair error on indexed tables (CASSANDRA-8020)
  * Do not exit nodetool repair when receiving JMX NOTIF_LOST (CASSANDRA-7909)
 Merged from 2.0:
+ * Add sanity check of $JAVA on startup (CASSANDRA-7676)
  * Schedule fat client schema pull on join (CASSANDRA-7993)
  * Don't reset nodes' versions when closing IncomingTcpConnections
    (CASSANDRA-7734)
diff --git a/bin/cassandra b/bin/cassandra
index 53a529e97a..c15a46a22d 100755
--- a/bin/cassandra
+++ b/bin/cassandra
@@ -98,6 +98,11 @@ else
     JAVA=java
 fi
 
+if [ -z $JAVA ] ; then
+    echo Unable to find java executable. Check JAVA_HOME and PATH environment variables. > /dev/stderr
+    exit 1;
+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. Also, empirically test that numactl