diff --git a/contrib/nightly/create_tarball.sh b/contrib/nightly/create_tarball.sh
index 3ebdb9af16..f94a297910 100755
--- a/contrib/nightly/create_tarball.sh
+++ b/contrib/nightly/create_tarball.sh
@@ -167,6 +167,10 @@ do_command "svn co $svnroot ompi"
 cd ompi
 svnversion="`svnversion .`"
 
+# remove all the unignore files so that we don't include anything that
+# shouldn't be in the tarball
+find . -name .ompi_unignore -exec rm -f {} \;
+
 # autogen is our friend
 do_command "./autogen.sh"