Thanks 

I have found teh root cause of the problem ...

--with-openssl=[my_dir]

The configure scripts has an assumption you are compiling against a binary packaged version of openssl and that there is a /lib folder under [my_dir]. This simply does not exist under any of the source code releases of openssl. So after I compiled the openssl source code I had to create the lib folder under my openssh build directory and symlink the *.so libraries there for the configure script to work

This is still an issue even if you edit Setup correctlty to compile the module.

>> This is a problem for people like me who are institutional users that have cross platform enterprise softwre deployment platforms (e.g. BladeLogic). There are restricted policies on what packages you can install on a server. In most cases especially for in house developed software) you need to build all dependencies seperatly and bundle them into a package (e.g. /opt RPM) that includes all required depencencies rather than rely on distribution library packages that are hard to manage at an Enterprise level and where you may be sharing the same OS.


To make the code more robust should it not 1st check under the root of [my_dir] before assuming [my_dir]/lib exests or at least report teh full path with the /lib added onto teh end of {my_dir} so you know where confiure has gone wrong ?

Is this not a fair expectation?

no lib folder
checking for openssl/ssl.h in /home/BD7046/openssl... no
checking whether compiling and linking against OpenSSL works... no

with lib folder
checking for openssl/ssl.h in /home/BC7046/openssl... yes
checking whether compiling and linking against OpenSSL works... yes


Thanks for all your help 
#PortingPerltoPython