found a solution https://askubuntu.com/questions/484237/how-do-i-get-the-latest-automake

sorry but found that answer confusing how do you run the script?

I too have run this on Rasbian Wheezy before with am2320b sensors and had it working. But having flattened the SD-card to try and get the vivarium working on a raspberry pi zero. I now get the same error message have even gone back as far as Noobs 1.5.0, 1.9.0, 2.2 and 2.4.4 on both a raspberry pi2 and 3 all have the same issue on cloning , make /install have given up on trying the www.raspiviv.com tutorial too many errors following the instructions when using rasbian stretch missing dependencies or depreciated files doesn't help not knowing programming or linux very well.

would the install fail if no sensors were giving data do they need to be fitted to achieve the install mine are on a pluggable header

I'm not sure of exactly what various distributions call the various toolings, but you may want to try some variation of:

sudo apt-get install autoconf automake

try this works for me using raspbian 8 for raspberry pi

dpkg-query -l automake
sudo apt-get install automake autotools-dev
git clone https://github.com/technion/lol_dht22
cd lol_dht22
cp configure.in configure.ac
aclocal
automake --add-missing -c
./configure
sudo make install

for those trying to follow this project
http://www.raspiviv.com/raspberry-pi-vivarium-controller/sensors
and getting the error, Steve-techno 14NOV2017 solution above worked for me.
I did get this warning, but it didn't seem to cause a problem:

aclocal: warning: autoconf input should be named 'configure.ac', not 'configure.in'
aclocal: warning: 'configure.ac' and 'configure.in' both present.
aclocal: proceeding with 'configure.ac'

thanks!

Regarding that link supplied, please don't ever, ever use PHP variables in an SQL query like this.