shared library error

I finally gave up on Red Hat and installed KNOPPIX 3.4 on my hard drive.

(see "wrong install dir in /lib/modules" if you're curious)

Now I have Comedi 0.7.68 and Comedilib 0.7.20 installed.

Then things got hairy - the header files didn't copy to gcc's include
directory,

so I compile:

 

gcc -I/usr/local/comedilib/include -lcomedi -o ni_test ni.c

 

(comedilib is a symlink to comedilib-0.7.20)

 

Now when I try to run ./ni_test I get "error while loading shared libraries:
libcomedi.so.0:

cannot open shared object file: no such file or directory".

 

I poked around and found that libcomedi.so.0 is a symlink to
libcomedi.so.0.0.0 so I copied

both to the working directory, but apparently that isn't where it's looking
for the file.

I'm used to writing "hello world" programs that don't use run-time
libraries.  Help?

 

Michael Thomas