diff --git a/lucene/common-build.xml b/lucene/common-build.xml
index 44d7353815a..c1713865a30 100644
--- a/lucene/common-build.xml
+++ b/lucene/common-build.xml
@@ -1060,6 +1060,8 @@
             <!-- turn jenkins blood red for hashmap bugs, even on jdk7 -->
             <sysproperty key="jdk.map.althashing.threshold" value="0"/>
 
+            <sysproperty key="tests.src.home" value="${user.dir}" />
+
             <!-- Only pass these to the test JVMs if defined in ANT. -->
             <syspropertyset>
                 <propertyref prefix="tests.maxfailures" />
diff --git a/solr/test-framework/src/java/org/apache/solr/util/ExternalPaths.java b/solr/test-framework/src/java/org/apache/solr/util/ExternalPaths.java
index 3e91d8122a0..e5a83efc4aa 100644
--- a/solr/test-framework/src/java/org/apache/solr/util/ExternalPaths.java
+++ b/solr/test-framework/src/java/org/apache/solr/util/ExternalPaths.java
@@ -63,7 +63,7 @@ public class ExternalPaths {
         }
       } catch (Exception e) {
         // If there is no "solr/conf" in the classpath, fall back to searching from the current directory.
-        file = new File(".");
+        file = new File(System.getProperty("tests.src.home", "."));
       }
       File base = file.getAbsoluteFile();
       while (!(new File(base, "solr/CHANGES.txt").exists()) && null != base) {