Cannot find mf.base for metafont when compiling

[J. David Blackstone]

  I am trying to install lilypond 1.4 from sources on a RedHat 5.2 
GNU/Linux system.

  During compilation I get an error from metafont saying a file
mf.base cannot be found.  I did a find from / and couldn't find this
file.  I have teTeX 1.0.7 installed and teTeX-texmf 1.0.2.

  A message on one of the mailing lists mentioned someone else had had
this problem and forced an install with make -i install.  I tried that
and lilypond seems to get installed; haven't yet tried to produce
output, though.

  I installed all the lilypond prerequisites from source, including
Python, teTeX, guile, flex, GNU make, and texinfo.  (The install
document mentions Python 1.5; I got 2.x; I presume this doesn't make a
difference.)  Since I have everything freshly installed, I would
presume my ancient operating system is not affecting things.  I plan
on upgrading to RedHat 7.1 next week, though, so I will see if that
changes anything.

  The install document mentioned installing tetex-dev or something
like that.  Is there something else I need to get in order to have
mf.base?  I would presume this file would be somewhere in one of my
build directories, even if something hadn't installed properly, so I
thought the find / would pick it up.

  Unfortunately, I do not (yet) know much about TeX.  I'm sure this
will be rapidly changing in the future. :)

  The mailing archives don't seem to show a lot of recent activity on
this list.  Should I post instead to gnu-music-discuss?

  Thank you.

J. David Blackstone