diff --git a/CHANGES.md b/CHANGES.md
index d68d247512f..8860b8950d8 100644
--- a/CHANGES.md
+++ b/CHANGES.md
@@ -51,6 +51,9 @@ never transient, and in practice job polling is the only way to recover).
 [#3409](https://github.com/cylc/cylc-flow/pull/3409) - prevent cylc-run from
 creating directories when executed for suites that do not exist.
 
+[#3433](https://github.com/cylc/cylc-flow/pull/3433) - fix server abort at
+shutdown during remote run dir tidy (introduced during Cylc 8 development).
+
 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
 ## __cylc-8.0a1 (2019-09-18)__
 
diff --git a/cylc/flow/remote.py b/cylc/flow/remote.py
index b877fa1ea53..e9703ebf4e7 100644
--- a/cylc/flow/remote.py
+++ b/cylc/flow/remote.py
@@ -70,7 +70,7 @@ def run_cmd(command, stdin=None, capture_process=False, capture_status=False,
             command inclusive of all opts and args required to run via ssh.
         stdin (file):
             If specified, it should be a readable file object.
-            If None, `open(DEVNULL)` is set if output is to be captured.
+            If None, DEVNULL is set if output is to be captured.
         capture_process (boolean):
             If True, set stdout=PIPE and return the Popen object.
         capture_status (boolean):
diff --git a/cylc/flow/task_remote_mgr.py b/cylc/flow/task_remote_mgr.py
index bb002c7de84..ad4f01ec182 100644
--- a/cylc/flow/task_remote_mgr.py
+++ b/cylc/flow/task_remote_mgr.py
@@ -241,7 +241,7 @@ def remote_tidy(self):
             cmd.append(get_remote_suite_run_dir(host, owner, self.suite))
             procs[(host, owner)] = (
                 cmd,
-                Popen(cmd, stdout=PIPE, stderr=PIPE, stdin=open(DEVNULL)))
+                Popen(cmd, stdout=PIPE, stderr=PIPE, stdin=DEVNULL))
         # Wait for commands to complete for a max of 10 seconds
         timeout = time() + 10.0
         while procs and time() < timeout: