diff --git a/autogen.sh b/autogen.sh
index 0abfcf40c7..de3bac942a 100755
--- a/autogen.sh
+++ b/autogen.sh
@@ -1,6 +1,11 @@
 #!/bin/sh
 # Part of pacemaker project
 # SPDX-License-Identifier: GPL-2.0-or-later
 
+# We configure some build artifacts to go to libltdl/config. autotools will
+# happily create it if it doesn't exist, but will still print an error and
+# exit nonzero in that case. :-(
+mkdir -p libltdl/config
+
 autoreconf -fisv || exit $?
 echo 'Now run ./configure and make'