diff --git a/buildtools/check-symbols.sh b/buildtools/check-symbols.sh
index 83b3a0182f..e458c0af72 100755
--- a/buildtools/check-symbols.sh
+++ b/buildtools/check-symbols.sh
@@ -5,7 +5,9 @@
 MAPFILE=$1
 OBJFILE=$2
 
-LIST_SYMBOL=$(dirname $(readlink -f $0))/map-list-symbol.sh
+ROOTDIR=$(readlink -f $(dirname $(readlink -f $0))/..)
+LIST_SYMBOL=$ROOTDIR/buildtools/map-list-symbol.sh
+CHECK_SYMBOL_MAPS=$ROOTDIR/devtools/check-symbol-maps.sh
 
 # added check for "make -C test/" usage
 if [ ! -e $MAPFILE ] || [ ! -f $OBJFILE ]
@@ -23,6 +25,11 @@ trap 'rm -f "$DUMPFILE"' EXIT
 objdump -t $OBJFILE >$DUMPFILE
 
 ret=0
+
+if ! $CHECK_SYMBOL_MAPS $MAPFILE; then
+	ret=1
+fi
+
 for SYM in `$LIST_SYMBOL -S EXPERIMENTAL $MAPFILE |cut -d ' ' -f 3`
 do
 	if grep -q "\.text.*[[:space:]]$SYM$" $DUMPFILE &&
diff --git a/devtools/check-symbol-maps.sh b/devtools/check-symbol-maps.sh
index 3bf5823cba..5bd290ac97 100755
--- a/devtools/check-symbol-maps.sh
+++ b/devtools/check-symbol-maps.sh
@@ -7,11 +7,15 @@ cd $(dirname $0)/..
 # speed up by ignoring Unicode details
 export LC_ALL=C
 
+if [ $# = 0 ] ; then
+    set -- $(find lib drivers -name '*.map')
+fi
+
 ret=0
 
 find_orphan_symbols ()
 {
-    for map in $(find lib drivers -name '*.map') ; do
+    for map in $@ ; do
         for sym in $(sed -rn 's,^([^}]*_.*);.*$,\1,p' $map) ; do
             if echo $sym | grep -q '^per_lcore_' ; then
                 symsrc=${sym#per_lcore_}
@@ -27,7 +31,7 @@ find_orphan_symbols ()
     done
 }
 
-orphan_symbols=$(find_orphan_symbols)
+orphan_symbols=$(find_orphan_symbols $@)
 if [ -n "$orphan_symbols" ] ; then
     echo "Found only in symbol map file:"
     echo "$orphan_symbols" | sed 's,^,\t,'
@@ -36,13 +40,13 @@ fi
 
 find_duplicate_symbols ()
 {
-    for map in $(find lib drivers -name '*.map') ; do
+    for map in $@ ; do
         buildtools/map-list-symbol.sh $map | \
             sort | uniq -c | grep -v " 1 $map" || true
     done
 }
 
-duplicate_symbols=$(find_duplicate_symbols)
+duplicate_symbols=$(find_duplicate_symbols $@)
 if [ -n "$duplicate_symbols" ] ; then
     echo "Found duplicates in symbol map file:"
     echo "$duplicate_symbols"