diff --git a/vcsh b/vcsh
index af41890cddc3737a6e3a30fc43aca1388909f45d..60d04074f9dfd8c256035b5596a8aa056f3f1d9f 100755
--- a/vcsh
+++ b/vcsh
@@ -362,7 +362,7 @@ write_gitignore() {
 	# Use the template GNU mktemo defaults to
 	# The downside to this is that we need to set TMPDIR explicitly; this may or may not be empty, so...
 	[ -z "$TMPDIR" ] && TMPDIR='/tmp'
-	tempfile=$(mktemp ${TMPDIR}/tmp.XXXXXXXXXX) || fatal "could not create tempfile" 51
+	tempfile=$(mktemp ${TMPDIR}/tmp.XXXXXXXXXX) || fatal "could not create tempfile: '${tempfile}'" 51
 
 	echo '*' > "$tempfile" || fatal "could not write to '$tempfile'" 57
 	for gitignore in $gitignores; do