python2.5 importerror on md5

[samn]

> I believe the _md5 module (as opposed to the md5 module) is a compiled
> extension. I'm guessing the import succeeds on the machine you used to
> build python.
>
> Try
>
>    import _md5
>    print _md5.__file__
>
> and see if you can find out where it's being loaded from. You'll
> probably find that you also need to tailor the sysprefix parameter, or
> some such.
>

You are correct that import md5 works fine on the machine that I
compiled on and only has problems on the other machine. I wasn't able
to import _md5 , even on the machine I compiled on.
Here's what I get on the machine I compiled on:
Python 2.5 (r25:51908, Oct 23 2006, 13:38:11)
[GCC 3.2.3 20030502 (Red Hat Linux 3.2.3-56)] on linux2
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>> import md5
>>> import _md5
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
ImportError: No module named _md5
>>> import md5
>>> print md5.__file__
/usr/arch/lib/python2.5/md5.py

sys.prefix is equal on both machines:
>>>import sys
>>> sys.prefix
'/usr/arch'

thanks for any help
sam