diff --git a/src/calibre/utils/monotonic.py b/src/calibre/utils/monotonic.py
index da6c88249e..1deadbaf61 100644
--- a/src/calibre/utils/monotonic.py
+++ b/src/calibre/utils/monotonic.py
@@ -4,6 +4,10 @@ from calibre.constants import plugins
 
 monotonicp, err = plugins['monotonic']
 if err:
+    # This happens on systems with very old glibc that does not
+    # have clock_gettime() (glibc < 2.17 http://stackoverflow.com/a/32649327)
+    if 'undefined symbol: clock_gettime' in err:
+        raise RuntimeError('Your glibc version is too old, glibc >= 2.17 is required')
     raise RuntimeError('Failed to load the monotonic module with error: ' + err)
 monotonic = monotonicp.monotonic
 del monotonicp, err