diff --git a/CHANGES.txt b/CHANGES.txt
index 8615e4d375a..843ab80c464 100644
--- a/CHANGES.txt
+++ b/CHANGES.txt
@@ -357,6 +357,7 @@ Release 0.20.0 - Unreleased
                come up (Jonathan Gray via Stack)
    HBASE-1538  Up zookeeper timeout from 10 seconds to 30 seconds to cut down
                on hbase-user traffic
+   HBASE-1539  prevent aborts due to missing zoo.cfg
 
   OPTIMIZATIONS
    HBASE-1412  Change values for delete column and column family in KeyValue
diff --git a/build.xml b/build.xml
index a35e08ffc4a..a74c8ff5da0 100644
--- a/build.xml
+++ b/build.xml
@@ -165,6 +165,7 @@
     <jar jarfile="${jarfile}"
         basedir="${build.classes}" >
       <fileset file="${basedir}/conf/hbase-default.xml"/>
+      <fileset file="${basedir}/conf/zoo.cfg"/>
       <zipfileset dir="${build.webapps}" prefix="webapps"/>
    		<manifest>
             <attribute name="Main-Class" value="org/apache/hadoop/hbase/mapred/Driver" />
diff --git a/src/test/zoo.cfg b/src/test/zoo.cfg
new file mode 100644
index 00000000000..1f3ca0439ad
--- /dev/null
+++ b/src/test/zoo.cfg
@@ -0,0 +1,14 @@
+# The number of milliseconds of each tick
+tickTime=2000
+# The number of ticks that the initial 
+# synchronization phase can take
+initLimit=10
+# The number of ticks that can pass between 
+# sending a request and getting an acknowledgement
+syncLimit=5
+# the directory where the snapshot is stored.
+dataDir=${hbase.tmp.dir}/zookeeper
+# the port at which the clients will connect
+clientPort=2181
+
+server.0=localhost:2888:3888