trouble compiling

[pollybot]

Hey there hi there ho there.
I am getting
"no acceptable c compiler found in $PATH"
error when trying to configure.
I searched this in different forums, and everyone responds with "you must not have gcc installed" or something similar, and then seems to lead them into reinstalling their OS.
(please don't make me!)
I have not had any problems before configuring and making tarballs.

Well,
"find / -name gcc" shows me
"/usr/lib/gcc"

when I echo $PATH, i see /usr/lib/gcc in there.

The last thing I did before I noticed this, is try to install an rpm on SUSE 10.2 with
yast -i blahblah.rpm

It didn't install the rpm,
so I tried compiling from source, and that is when I noticed the error.
That was the first time I tried installing an rpm.

I rebooted, in case the compiler was just stuck on something.
Still the same error.

Help?

I am on SUSE 10.2 ppc.

Another weird bit.
Before, I could tar, ./configure, and make using any of my user accounts, and had to su to make install if i wanted.
Now if I try to unpack a tarball , i get "permission denied".
When I go to root, I can tar xvzf fine,
but get stopped at configure as I explained above.

Polly

[pollybot]

Problem fixed.
I got some help.
Somehow the gcc executable was removed, but left the lib.
All I had to do was reinstall it.
Simple but very confusing, since I had used gcc earlier today and had made no active attempt to uninstall it.