pkg install problem

[William Christopher Carleton]

I'm using Ubuntu 8.1 on a Dell XPS m1210 and having trouble with Octave pkg 
install. I'm trying to install the odepkg and get the following error:

octave:1> install pkg odepkg-0.6.4.tar.gz 

configure: error: C compiler cannot create executables

See `config.log' for more details.

error: the configure script returned the following error: checking for gcc... 
gcc

checking for C compiler default output file name... 

error: called from `pkg:configure_make' in file 
/usr/share/octave/3.0.0/m/pkg/pkg.m near line 1045, column 2

octave:1> exit

Any suggestions? I've tried invoking octave with sudo and also using sudo in 
front of pkg install, but neither has worked. 

Chris