this kind of thing is a verry common problem i get when installing applications.. i think it may be because i didnt install all of the packages when i installed mandrake

any ideas ?

[root@localhost lopster-1.2.0]# ./configure
loading cache ./config.cache
checking for a BSD compatible install... /usr/bin/install -c
checking whether build environment is sane... yes
checking whether make sets ${MAKE}... yes
checking for working aclocal... missing
checking for working autoconf... missing
checking for working automake... missing
checking for working autoheader... missing
checking for working makeinfo... missing
checking for gcc... no
checking for cc... no
configure: error: no acceptable cc found in $PATH
[root@localhost lopster-1.2.0]# make install
make: *** No rule to make target `install'. Stop.
[root@localhost lopster-1.2.0]#

I think you are right. I think in mandrake you have a section for adding or removing programs? find it and install you developmental tools(that is what it is listed as in redhat). You must have something similar to that in mandrake. You should already have those programs on your install CDS

For one thing you shouldn't be doing ./configure as root. Even though the ./configure broke -- had it worked you would have typed 'make' next as a user, not make install as root. If the 'make' works as a user, you can _then_ 'make install' as root. But first you need to figure out why the ./configure didnt take. Which you can obviously see it cant find an acceptable c compiler. Flip in your mandrake cds and go to the development section and install gcc.

Instead of installing from source, try to install using rpms. They are easier to maintain. One place to find rpms for your distro is http://rpmfind.net/ . You will have to install the gcc and a lot of other lib too. It would be better if you can find some helpful Linux people around to help you out and learn from them.