[ale] Mandrake 10.0 configure and make errors - whaaa?

[Jay]

Hi all, I've got a problem with a Mandrake 10.0 machine I admin at 
school.  I set it up as an ftp server and it's running great.  However, 
I ran into a strange problem today while trying to install software.  
I'm hoping that someone's had a similiar experience and can shed some 
light here. 

The problem is with any software I've tried to install from source (rpms 
are fine).  I run a ./configure as usual, and it finishes the configure, 
but apparently is failing to create a Makefile, because when i then run 
"make" it says "make: *** No targets specified and no makefile found.  
Stop.".  Now, when I do this, the configure script bounces out the 
following errors:

grep: conftest.defines: No such file or directory
grep: conftest.undefs: No such file or directory
cat: ./confstat8zTZka/in: No such file or directory

That's my only clue I can find so far as to what the problem is.  If 
anyone has any ideas or needs more outputs, let me know and I'll put it 
in a file and on the web for you to see.  Oh, and if it helps any, the 
specific stuff I was trying to install was naim, pork, or centericq, all 
of which are ncurses IM clients.  I was able to compile something with 
gcc also, so the compiler is all hunky dory. 

Thanks!

-Jay