When I execute ./configure in the mc top level directory it tells me it can not
find glib that mc needs glib-1.2.6 or above I thought that I installed glib-1.2.6 correctly I did configure make make install... what more
how does one set the LD_LIBRARY_PATH environment variable? I edited ld.so.conf to piont to /usr/local/bin that does not work I still get the error cant find glib

The libraries are probably in /usr/local/lib -- bin directories are for actually executables while libraries go to live in the corresponding lib directory.

To set the LD_LIBRARY_PATH you can do:

export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=<whatever>

to append to it:

export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=$LD_LIBRARY_PATH:<whatever>

This assumes bash or a Bourne style shell, which is the most commonly used Linux shell. The syntac for csh and tcsh is slightly different. If you want to make changes to an environment variable permanent accross shell sessions, you'll need too add the export command(s) to the shell startup files.

this may sound like a stupid question but where are the bash shell startup files kept

and am i suposed to type that whole command LD_LIBRARY_PATH thing at the prompt befor compileing or put it in the configure script

Iam sorry I dont understand linux environment varibles

Yeah, you enter the "export ..." stuff at the prompt before compiling. As for the startup files, they should be in your home directory (~) and I know you can put stuff like this in ~/.bashrc, but you may be able to put it in ~/.profile or ~/.bash_profile instead.