If you don't have a properly setup system for compiling GNU programs you might get the common error message:
| checking for C compiler default output file name... configure: error: C compiler cannot create executables See `config.log' for more details. |
with the config.log showing:
| /usr/bin/ld: crt1.o: No such file: No such file or directory |
To fix in Debian:
| # aptitude install libc6-dev |