diff --git a/src/test/rgw/sfs/test_rgw_sfs_wal_checkpoint.cc b/src/test/rgw/sfs/test_rgw_sfs_wal_checkpoint.cc
index f88810d569e854..c6e98109b6e9e3 100644
--- a/src/test/rgw/sfs/test_rgw_sfs_wal_checkpoint.cc
+++ b/src/test/rgw/sfs/test_rgw_sfs_wal_checkpoint.cc
@@ -34,6 +34,19 @@ class TestSFSWALCheckpoint : public ::testing::Test {
     fs::create_directory(test_dir);
     cct->_conf.set_val("rgw_sfs_data_path", test_dir);
     cct->_log->start();
+  }
+
+  ~TestSFSWALCheckpoint() override {
+    store.reset();
+    fs::remove_all(test_dir);
+  }
+
+  // Ordinarily this would just go in the TestSFSWALCheckpoint constructor.
+  // Unfortunately our tests need to tweak config settings that must be
+  // done _before_ the SFStore is created so that they're in place when
+  // DBConn's storage->on_open handler is invoked, so each test has to
+  // call this function explicitly.
+  void init_store() {
     store.reset(new rgw::sal::SFStore(cct.get(), test_dir));
 
     sqlite::SQLiteUsers users(store->db_conn);
@@ -58,11 +71,6 @@ class TestSFSWALCheckpoint : public ::testing::Test {
     );
   }
 
-  ~TestSFSWALCheckpoint() override {
-    store.reset();
-    fs::remove_all(test_dir);
-  }
-
   // This will spawn num_threads threads, each creating num_objects objects,
   // and will record and return the maximum size the WAL reaches while this
   // is ongoing.
@@ -102,6 +110,7 @@ class TestSFSWALCheckpoint : public ::testing::Test {
 TEST_F(TestSFSWALCheckpoint, confirm_wal_explosion) {
   cct->_conf.set_val("rgw_sfs_wal_checkpoint_use_sqlite_default", "true");
   cct->_conf.set_val("rgw_sfs_wal_size_limit", "-1");
+  init_store();
 
   // Using the SQLite default checkpointing mechanism with
   // 10 concurrent writer threads will easily push us past
@@ -118,6 +127,8 @@ TEST_F(TestSFSWALCheckpoint, confirm_wal_explosion) {
 // This test proves the WAL growth problem has been fixed
 // by our SFS checkpoint mechanism.
 TEST_F(TestSFSWALCheckpoint, test_wal_checkpoint) {
+  init_store();
+
   // Using our SFS checkpoint mechanism, the WAL may exceed
   // 16MB while writing, because the trunacte checkpoints
   // don't always succeed, but it shouldn't go over by much.