diff --git a/configure b/configure
index c6d0b4f755..9c050bc43e 100755
--- a/configure
+++ b/configure
@@ -2148,9 +2148,9 @@ EOF
   _inttypes=no
   cc_check && _inttypes=yes
   if test "$_inttypes" = yes ; then
-    die "you don't have inttypes.h, but sys/bitypes.h is present. Please copy etc/inttypes.h.link into the include path, rename it to inttypes.h and re-run configure."
+    die "You don't have inttypes.h, but sys/bitypes.h is present. Please copy etc/inttypes.h into the include path, and re-run configure."
   else
-    die "cannot find header either inttypes.h or bitypes.h (see DOCS/HTML/en/faq.html)"
+    die "Cannot find header either inttypes.h or bitypes.h (see DOCS/HTML/en/faq.html)."
   fi
 fi
 echores "$_inttypes"
diff --git a/etc/inttypes.h b/etc/inttypes.h
index b1e93879e4..2f22a52fe9 100644
--- a/etc/inttypes.h
+++ b/etc/inttypes.h
@@ -1,13 +1,4 @@
 
 // fallback if the user doesn't have inttypes.h (libc5 systems)
 
-typedef unsigned char uint8_t;
-typedef unsigned short uint16_t;
-typedef unsigned long uint32_t;
-typedef unsigned long long uint64_t;
-
-typedef signed char int8_t;
-typedef signed short int16_t;
-typedef signed long int32_t;
-typedef signed long long int64_t;
-
+#include <sys/bitypes.h>
diff --git a/etc/inttypes.h.link b/etc/inttypes.h.link
deleted file mode 100644
index 2f22a52fe9..0000000000
--- a/etc/inttypes.h.link
+++ /dev/null
@@ -1,4 +0,0 @@
-
-// fallback if the user doesn't have inttypes.h (libc5 systems)
-
-#include <sys/bitypes.h>