diff --git a/src/plugins/switch/elan/qsw.c b/src/plugins/switch/elan/qsw.c
index 6865c526ead0f03a1d5dab62e088d37c4b064290..96ae084dc8a8fafa33ea1277a243ac67e0320403 100644
--- a/src/plugins/switch/elan/qsw.c
+++ b/src/plugins/switch/elan/qsw.c
@@ -56,8 +56,17 @@
  *  want to include here since we are using the new
  *  version-nonspecific libelanctrl.
  *  (XXX: What is the equivalent in libelanctrl?)
+ *
+ * slurm/482: the elan USER context range is now split
+ *  into two segments, regular user context and RMS 
+ *  context ranges. Do not allow a context range
+ *  (lowcontext -- highcontext) to span these two segments,
+ *  as this will generate and elan initialization error
+ *  when MPI tries to attach to the capability. For now,
+ *  restrict SLURM's range to the RMS one (starting at 0x400)
+ * 
  */
-# define ELAN_USER_BASE_CONTEXT_NUM    0x020
+# define ELAN_USER_BASE_CONTEXT_NUM    0x400 /* act. RMS_BASE_CONTEXT_NUM */
 # define ELAN_USER_TOP_CONTEXT_NUM     0x7ff
 
 # define Version      cap_version