diff --git a/CHANGES b/CHANGES
index 9c23883b0..2250abb8a 100644
--- a/CHANGES
+++ b/CHANGES
@@ -11,7 +11,9 @@ Daniel (8 January 2001)
   the separator work again when getting multiple globbed URLs to stdout.
 
 - Worked with Loic Dachary to get the make dist and make distcheck work
-  correctly.
+  correctly. The 'maketgz' script is now using the automake generated 'make
+  dist' when creating release archives. Loic successfully made 'make rpms'
+  automatically build RPMs!
 
 Loic Dachary (6 January 2001)
 - Automated generation of rpm packages, no need to be root.
diff --git a/Makefile.am b/Makefile.am
index 415bde30c..b2270a47e 100644
--- a/Makefile.am
+++ b/Makefile.am
@@ -6,13 +6,15 @@ AUTOMAKE_OPTIONS = foreign no-dependencies
 
 EXTRA_DIST = \
 	CHANGES LEGAL maketgz MITX.txt MPL-1.1.txt \
-	config-win32.h reconf packages/README
+	config-win32.h reconf packages/README Makefile.dist
 
 SUBDIRS = docs lib src include tests packages
 
 # create a root makefile in the distribution:
 dist-hook:
-	cp Makefile.dist $(distdir)/Makefile
+	cp $(srcdir)/Makefile.dist $(distdir)/Makefile
+
+check: test
 
 test:
 	@(cd tests; make quiet-test)
diff --git a/tests/Makefile.am b/tests/Makefile.am
index f2a917ae5..f7a84439b 100644
--- a/tests/Makefile.am
+++ b/tests/Makefile.am
@@ -9,10 +9,12 @@ curl:
 	@(cd ..; make)
 
 test:
-	$(PERL) runtests.pl
+	$(MAKE) -C data test
+	srcdir=$(srcdir) $(PERL) $(srcdir)/runtests.pl
 
 quiet-test:
-	$(PERL) runtests.pl -s -a
+	$(MAKE) -C data test
+	srcdir=$(srcdir) $(PERL) $(srcdir)/runtests.pl -s -a
 
 clean:
 	rm -rf log
diff --git a/tests/data/Makefile.am b/tests/data/Makefile.am
index a34468676..82448af55 100644
--- a/tests/data/Makefile.am
+++ b/tests/data/Makefile.am
@@ -1,6 +1,9 @@
 all:
 install:
 
+test:
+	[ -f command1.txt ] || ln -s $(srcdir)/*.txt .
+
 EXTRA_DIST = command1.txt      error113.txt      name17.txt        prot8.txt \
 command10.txt     error114.txt      name18.txt        prot9.txt \
 command100.txt    error115.txt      name19.txt        reply1.txt \
diff --git a/tests/runtests.pl b/tests/runtests.pl
index deb9311fa..86df18fb1 100755
--- a/tests/runtests.pl
+++ b/tests/runtests.pl
@@ -8,6 +8,7 @@
 
 use strict;
 
+my $srcdir = $ENV{'srcdir'} || '.';
 my $HOSTIP="127.0.0.1";
 my $HOSTPORT=8999; # bad name, but this is the HTTP server port
 my $FTPPORT=8921;  # this is the FTP server port
@@ -108,7 +109,7 @@ sub runhttpserver {
     }
 
     if ($RUNNING != 1) {
-        system("perl ./httpserver.pl $HOSTPORT &");
+        system("perl $srcdir/httpserver.pl $HOSTPORT &");
         sleep 1; # give it a little time to start
     }
     else {
@@ -149,7 +150,7 @@ sub runftpserver {
     }
 
     if ($RUNNING != 1) {
-        system("perl ./ftpserver.pl $FTPPORT &");
+        system("perl $srcdir/ftpserver.pl $FTPPORT &");
         sleep 1; # give it a little time to start
     }
     else {