diff --git a/configure.ac b/configure.ac
index 46162b44..14a723c6 100644
--- a/configure.ac
+++ b/configure.ac
@@ -327,6 +327,14 @@ AC_SUBST(MATH_LDFLAGS)
 
 # Checks for libraries.
 
+PKG_CHECK_MODULES([LIBSODIUM], [libsodium],
+    [
+        LIBSODIUM_FOUND="yes"
+    ],
+    [
+        LIBSODIUM_FOUND="no"
+    ])
+
 if test "x$WANT_NACL" = "xyes"; then
     NACL_LIBS=
     NACL_LDFLAGS=
@@ -368,7 +376,7 @@ if test "x$WANT_NACL" = "xyes"; then
     AC_SUBST(NACL_LDFLAGS)
     AC_SUBST(NACL_OBJECTS)
     AC_SUBST(NACL_OBJECTS_PKGCONFIG)
-else
+elif test "x$LIBSODIUM_FOUND" = "xno"; then
     LIBSODIUM_LIBS=
     LIBSODIUM_LDFLAGS=
     LDFLAGS_SAVE="$LDFLAGS"
@@ -428,7 +436,7 @@ if test "x$WANT_NACL" = "xyes"; then
     CPPFLAGS="$CPPFLAGS_SAVE"
     AC_SUBST(NACL_CFLAGS)
     AC_DEFINE([VANILLA_NACL], [1], [use nacl instead of libsodium])
-else
+elif test "x$LIBSODIUM_FOUND" = "xno"; then
     LIBSODIUM_CFLAGS=
     CFLAGS_SAVE="$CFLAGS"
     CPPFLAGS_SAVE="$CPPFLAGS"
diff --git a/other/travis/autotools-script b/other/travis/autotools-script
index 735229fb..18cb2d26 100755
--- a/other/travis/autotools-script
+++ b/other/travis/autotools-script
@@ -15,13 +15,4 @@ RUN ./configure \
 # We use make instead of RUN $MAKE here, because the autotools build will only
 # ever run natively on the Linux container, never on a Windows cross compilation
 # docker instance or an OSX machine.
-make -j`nproc`
-
-# This doesn't currently work on Travis, because the autotools build is broken.
-# It does not look up libsodium by pkg-config, so without the --with flags it
-# won't find it. We don't care that much about distcheck at this point, but we
-# do care whether it configures/builds at all, which is exercised by the make
-# call above. Tests are executed by the cmake build.
-echo "*** make distcheck currently fails; see https://github.com/TokTok/toxcore/blob/master/other/travis/autotools-script#L16 ***"
-make distcheck -j`nproc` \
-  || echo "*** make distcheck has failed as expected; don't be alarmed ***"
+make distcheck -j`nproc` -k