MySQLdb-0.3.5 build problem (/usr/bin/ld: cannot find -lz)

[Darek Kedra]

Hi,

I'm trying to install MySQLdb-0.3.5 with python 2.1 on Mandrake 8.0.
After:
# python setup.py build
I am getting:

<--snip-->
running build_ext
building '_mysql' extension
skipping _mysqlmodule.c (build/temp.linux-i686-2.1/_mysqlmodule.o
up-to-date)
gcc -shared build/temp.linux-i686-2.1/_mysqlmodule.o -L/usr/lib/mysql
-lmysqlclient -lz -o build/lib.linux-i686-2.1/_mysql.so
/usr/bin/ld: cannot find -lz
collect2: ld returned 1 exit status
error: command 'gcc' failed with exit status 1

<end error messgs>
I did: "export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/lib:$LD_LIBRARY_PATH" but to no avail.
How to solve it?  Thanks a lot for your help.

Darek Kedra