I'm trying to upgrade to the latest release of MonetDB (Jul2015-SP4) instead of an older one. I'm building and installing as a non-root user, into $HOME/opt/monetdb . Well, * ./bootstrap SUCCEEDED * ./configure --prefix=$HOME/opt/monetdb SUCCEEDED * ./make SUCCEEDED * ./make install FAILED Here's the error message: /usr/bin/install -c -m 644 mapi.h /home/eyalroz/opt/monetdb/include/monetdb/mapi.h /bin/sh ../../libtool --mode=install /usr/bin/install -c libmapi.la '/home/eyalroz/opt/monetdb/lib' libtool: install: error: cannot install `libmapi.la' to a directory not ending in /usr/local/lib I don't see why libtool is telling me that. What business is it of libtool what I want to call my directories? Anyway, it doesn't seem to me I tried to do something esoteric... how do you suggest I get around this? Eyal PS - It's a Fedora 22 machine in case that matters.