> I've been trying to compile one of my programs on a new Linux
> installation (Czech RedHat 7.1), but configure failed:
> ...
> checking whether c++ accepts -g... yes
> checking for ranlib... ranlib
> checking host system type... configure: error: can not guess host type;
> you must specify one
>
> On my home computer (SuSE Linux 6.4), the package configures OK...
> What exactly is the host type and how does autoconf guess it?
The host type is the combination of cpu, vendor and os that uniquely
identifies a system (in your case: i686-redhat-linux and i486-suse-linux
would be typical examples, though config.guess will probably produce
i686-pc-linux-gnu for both of them).
My guess is that you're using an outdated config.guess and config.sub
that are unable to recognize a RedHat 7.1 system. I'd suggest getting
the latest version from ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/config
