The Zlib package contains compression and uncompression routines used by some programs. &buildtime; &zlib-time; &diskspace; &zlib-compsize; &aa-zlib-down; &aa-zlib-dep;   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 have the results tested, issue: make check. make check Install the shared library: make install Now also build the non-shared (static) library: make clean ./configure --prefix=/usr make To have the results tested, 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 depended upon 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. Therefore we move the run-time components of the shared Zlib into /lib by issuing the following command: mv /usr/lib/libz.so.* /lib Now we need to fix up the /usr/lib/libz.so symlink because we just moved the location of the file it points to: ln -sf ../../lib/libz.so.1 /usr/lib/libz.so &aa-zlib-shortdesc; &aa-zlib-desc;