diff --git a/build_tools/prep_tarball b/build_tools/prep_tarball
index 3b66b7925bf42179135d7b7b8c2bb653074e66ad..6f4dadb3a55599c05f310faa80ae8afb34d1065f 100755
--- a/build_tools/prep_tarball
+++ b/build_tools/prep_tarball
@@ -18,6 +18,15 @@ if ! which wikiexport.py 2>&1 > /dev/null ; then
 	exit 1
 fi
 
+if ! which pdftotext 2>&1 > /dev/null ; then
+	echo
+	echo "pdftotext not found.  Please install it."
+	echo
+	echo "On Debian/Ubuntu/Fedora/CentOS, install the poppler-utils package."
+	echo
+	exit 1
+fi
+
 cd doc
 echo "Exporting Asterisk wiki to a PDF (this will take a minute) ..."
 wikiexport.py