ZLib not found

["Chip Burke" <cburke@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

This list likely hates me by now. Now I am unable to get past ZLIB. ZLib is
indeed installed on my system.

/usr/lib/libz.a 
/usr/lib/libz.so
/usr/lib64/libz.a 
/usr/lib64/libz.so

are the various places it lives and I am on version 1.2.3 of Zlib. However,
the configure script bombs with:

checking for ZLIB support... yes
checking if the location of ZLIB install directory is defined... no
checking for gzgets in -lz... no
configure: error: ZLIB extension requires zlib >= 1.0.9

I have tried the flag -with-zlib-dir= with /usr/lib64, /usr/lib, and
/usr/include and it still fails. 

Config.log ends with

configure:22706: checking for ZLIB support
configure:22753: checking if the location of ZLIB install directory is
defined
configure:23188: checking for gzgets in -lz
configure:23207: gcc -o conftest -g -O2   -L/usr/kerberos/lib64 conftest.c
-lz -lpcre -lresolv -lm -ldl -lnsl  -lxml2 -lz -lm -lgssapi_krb5 -lkrb5
-lk5crypto -lcom_err -lssl -lcrypto -ldl -lz 1>&5
/usr/bin/ld: skipping incompatible /usr/lib/libcom_err.so when searching for
-lcom_err
/usr/bin/ld: skipping incompatible /usr/lib/libcom_err.a when searching for
-lcom_err
/usr/bin/ld: cannot find -lcom_err
collect2: ld returned 1 exit status
configure: failed program was:
#line 23196 "configure"
#include "confdefs.h"
/* Override any gcc2 internal prototype to avoid an error.  */
/* We use char because int might match the return type of a gcc2
    builtin and then its argument prototype would still apply.  */
char gzgets();

int main() {
gzgets()
; return 0; }

I saw krb5 was listed in there so I made sure krb5-libs and krb5-devel were
installed too. 

Any ideas?

Thanks!