diff --git a/pkgs/servers/monitoring/nagios/plugins/official/default.nix b/pkgs/servers/monitoring/nagios/plugins/official/default.nix
index 56bd77134090..117e95fd3cbd 100644
--- a/pkgs/servers/monitoring/nagios/plugins/official/default.nix
+++ b/pkgs/servers/monitoring/nagios/plugins/official/default.nix
@@ -8,6 +8,18 @@ stdenv.mkDerivation {
     sha256 = "0vm7sjiygxbfc5vbsi1g0dakpvynfzi86fhqx4yxd61brn0g8ghr";
   };
 
+  # !!! Awful hack. Grrr... this of course only works on NixOS.
+  # Anyway the check that configure performs to figure out the ping
+  # syntax is totally impure, because it runs an actual ping to
+  # localhost (which won't work for ping6 if IPv6 support isn't
+  # configured on the build machine).
+  preConfigure= "
+    configureFlagsArray=(
+      --with-ping-command='/var/setuid-wrappers/ping -n -U -w %d -c %d %s'
+      --with-ping6-command='/var/setuid-wrappers/ping6 -n -U -w %d -c %d %s'
+    )
+  ";
+
   meta = {
     description = "Official plugins for Nagios";
     homepage = http://www.nagios.org/;