Okay. So i just installed linux (Fedora core 2) and had a few pieces of software that i could not find an rpm for. So i was left with no option but to compile the software from source using the following commands to configure and install.

./configure
make
make install

After doing this, everything seemed to install okay but after trying to compile different software that depended on the libraries that i had just compiled, it was impossible to generate a makefile. I was told that the libraries that i had just compiled could not be found. The libraries are compiled and on my hard drive but for some reason the configure command can't find them in order to generate a makefile. Am i doing something wrong? Is there a command that i need to type in order for configure to find these libraries that i know are on my system? Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Did you compile the libraries or install them?

If you installed new libraries the path to them still needs to be configured. As root, open the file /etc/ld.so.conf in a text editor and add the path to where you installed the libraries.

Then run the command
ldconfig

The libraries were compiled by myself and now cannot be found by other programs that depened on them. I'm sure that they are there but just can't be found. They were placed in /usr/local/lib/ at compile time and i think this might be the problem.

somewhat simple soution is to run /sbin/ldconfig to update shared library links etc. Then rerun configure. I that does not work then make uninstall and install the libraries where they are most likely to be found by other apps, /usr/lib instead of /usr/local/lib.

To do that run ./configure --prefix=/usr && make install and then they should be found.

When you say the libraries cannot be found, what is the error message you get? Copy and paste an example for us please.

That is what I was referring to in my previous post. In /etc/ld.so.conf put in the line
/usr/local/lib
and then run the command
ldconfig
(all as root)