configure crt1.o error on PPC64 RHEL

[Doug B]

The configure script is complaining that:

checking for C compiler default output file name... configure: error:
C compiler cannot create executables

config.log says:

/usr/bin/ld: crt1.o: No such file: No such file or directory
collect2: ld returned 1 exit status
configure:1704: $? = 1
configure: failed program was:
| /* confdefs.h.  */
|
| #define PACKAGE_NAME ""
| #define PACKAGE_TARNAME ""
| #define PACKAGE_VERSION ""
| #define PACKAGE_STRING ""
| #define PACKAGE_BUGREPORT ""
| /* end confdefs.h.  */
|
| int
| main ()
| {
|
|   ;
|   return 0;
| }
configure:1743: error: C compiler cannot create executables

After a bit of searching, I see that glibc-devel is what provides this
file, which I have now installed, but configure still gives the same
error.  The file exists under /usr/lib64.

I get the same results with MapServer 4.10.0, 4.8.4, and 4.6.2.  Line
number above is from 4.8.4.  This is on RHEL 2.6.9-42 for PPC64.  I
have no such problems on an old Fedora Core 2 system.

Thanks for any assistance or advice.
Doug