%general-entities; ]> Zlib Zlib is known to build its shared library incorrectly if CFLAGS is specified in the environment. If you are using your own CFLAGS variable, be sure to add the -fPIC directive to your CFLAGS for the duration of the below configure command, then remove it afterwards. Prepare Zlib for compilation: ./configure --prefix=/usr --shared Compile the package: make To test the results, issue: make check. Install the shared library: make install Now also build the non-shared (static) library: make clean ./configure --prefix=/usr make To again test the results, issue: make check. Install the static library: make install And fix the permissions on the static library: chmod 644 /usr/lib/libz.a It is good policy and common practice to place important libraries into the /lib directory. This matters most in scenarios where /usr is on a separate partition. Essentially, the run-time components of any libraries that are used by programs in /bin or /sbin should reside in /lib so that they are on the root partition and available in the event of /usr being inaccessible. For the above reason we move the run-time components of the shared Zlib into /lib: mv /usr/lib/libz.so.* /lib Now we need to fix the /usr/lib/libz.so symlink because we just moved the file it points to: ln -sf ../../lib/libz.so.1 /usr/lib/libz.so Installed libraries libz[a,so] libz* libz* contains compression and un-compression functions used by some programs.