diff --git a/tests/test-remotefilelog-clone.t b/tests/test-remotefilelog-clone.t
--- a/tests/test-remotefilelog-clone.t
+++ b/tests/test-remotefilelog-clone.t
@@ -76,11 +76,19 @@
 
 # full clone from shallow
 
-  $ hg clone --noupdate ssh://user@dummy/shallow full
+Note: the output to STDERR comes from a different process to the output on
+STDOUT and their relative ordering is not deterministic. As a result, the test
+was failing sporadically. To avoid this, we capture STDERR to a file and 
+check its contents separately.
+
+  $ TEMP_STDERR=full-clone-from-shallow.stderr.tmp
+  $ hg clone --noupdate ssh://user@dummy/shallow full 2>$TEMP_STDERR
   streaming all changes
   remote: abort: Cannot clone from a shallow repo to a full repo.
+  [255]
+  $ cat $TEMP_STDERR
   abort: unexpected response from remote server: empty string
-  [255]
+  $ rm $TEMP_STDERR
 
 # getbundle full clone