diff --git a/CHANGELOG b/CHANGELOG
index b3b4aa380d5db7027a1dee4ed44cac9ee8082ea9..97606659f3597b5abe39c4dd5d7a6fabf5c5690a 100644
--- a/CHANGELOG
+++ b/CHANGELOG
@@ -1,6 +1,7 @@
 Please view this file on the master branch, on stable branches it's out of date.
 
 v 8.5.0 (unreleased)
+  - Ensure rake tasks that don't need a DB connection can be run without one
   - Add "visibility" flag to GET /projects api endpoint
   - Ignore binary files in code search to prevent Error 500 (Stan Hu)
   - Upgrade gitlab_git to 7.2.23 to fix commit message mentions in first branch push
diff --git a/lib/gitlab/current_settings.rb b/lib/gitlab/current_settings.rb
index 429f1f9bb566c5f4f88d328a1cc63f2a6cf61368..19b7427256c3d22e12df167f59060fe9b0800b1c 100644
--- a/lib/gitlab/current_settings.rb
+++ b/lib/gitlab/current_settings.rb
@@ -38,7 +38,7 @@ def connect_to_db?
                  true
                end
 
-      use_db && ActiveRecord::Base.connection.active? &&
+      use_db && ActiveRecord::Base.connected? &&
                 # The following condition is important: if a migrations adds a
                 # column to the application_settings table and a validation in
                 # the ApplicationSetting uses this new column we might end-up in