diff --git a/ChangeLog b/ChangeLog
index fb7ea56cb8..bf2287fe08 100644
--- a/ChangeLog
+++ b/ChangeLog
@@ -1,3 +1,9 @@
+2007-06-10  Emmanuele Bassi  <ebassi@gnome.org>
+
+	* gtk/gtksearchenginesimple.c: Unconditionally define _GNU_SOURCE
+	and XOPEN_SOURCE, in order to make the simple search engine backend
+	build on really ancient GNU libc. (#444097)
+
 2007-06-10  Michael Natterer  <mitch@imendio.com>
 
 	* gdk/quartz/gdkdrawable-quartz.c (gdk_quartz_draw_arc): fix
diff --git a/gtk/gtksearchenginesimple.c b/gtk/gtksearchenginesimple.c
index ede5e85214..16efa88dc5 100644
--- a/gtk/gtksearchenginesimple.c
+++ b/gtk/gtksearchenginesimple.c
@@ -22,10 +22,13 @@
 
 #include <config.h>
 
-#ifdef HAVE_GNU_FTW
+/* these must be defined even when HAVE_GNU_FTW is not defined
+ * because (really) old versions of GNU libc have ftw.h but do
+ * export ftw() and friends only if _XOPEN_SOURCE and _GNU_SOURCE
+ * are defined. see bug #444097.
+ */
 #define _XOPEN_SOURCE 500
 #define _GNU_SOURCE 
-#endif
 
 #ifdef HAVE_FTW_H
 #include <ftw.h>