diff --git a/src/bin/pg_controldata/pg_controldata.c b/src/bin/pg_controldata/pg_controldata.c
index 5c77f40313b..30ad46912e1 100644
--- a/src/bin/pg_controldata/pg_controldata.c
+++ b/src/bin/pg_controldata/pg_controldata.c
@@ -167,7 +167,14 @@ main(int argc, char *argv[])
 
 	/* get a copy of the control file */
 	ControlFile = get_controlfile(DataDir, &crc_ok);
-	if (!crc_ok)
+	if (ControlFile->pg_control_version != PG_CONTROL_VERSION)
+	{
+		pg_log_warning("control file version (%u) does not match the version understood by this program (%u)",
+					   ControlFile->pg_control_version, PG_CONTROL_VERSION);
+		pg_log_warning_detail("Either the control file has been created with a different version of PostgreSQL, "
+							  "or it is corrupt.  The results below are untrustworthy.");
+	}
+	else if (!crc_ok)
 	{
 		pg_log_warning("calculated CRC checksum does not match value stored in control file");
 		pg_log_warning_detail("Either the control file is corrupt, or it has a different layout than this program "
diff --git a/src/bin/pg_controldata/t/001_pg_controldata.pl b/src/bin/pg_controldata/t/001_pg_controldata.pl
index 4aea00d6d5a..6ace61f9314 100644
--- a/src/bin/pg_controldata/t/001_pg_controldata.pl
+++ b/src/bin/pg_controldata/t/001_pg_controldata.pl
@@ -21,16 +21,22 @@ command_like([ 'pg_controldata', $node->data_dir ],
 	qr/checkpoint/, 'pg_controldata produces output');
 
 
-# check with a corrupted pg_control
+# Check with a corrupted pg_control
+#
+# To corrupt it, overwrite most of it with zeros. We leave the
+# beginning portion that contains the pg_control version number (first
+# 16 bytes) unmodified because otherwise you get an error about the
+# version number, instead of checksum mismatch.
 
 my $pg_control = $node->data_dir . '/global/pg_control';
 my $size = -s $pg_control;
 
-open my $fh, '>', $pg_control or BAIL_OUT($!);
+open my $fh, '+<', $pg_control or BAIL_OUT($!);
 binmode $fh;
 
-# fill file with zeros
-print $fh pack("x[$size]");
+my ($overwrite_off, $overwrite_len) = (16, $size - 16);
+seek $fh, $overwrite_off, 0 or BAIL_OUT($!);
+print $fh pack("x[$overwrite_len]");
 close $fh;
 
 command_checks_all(