[R-sig-Geo] installing rgdal on Ubuntu 6.10

[Patrick Giraudoux]

Deal all,

I am moving from Windows XP to Ubuntu and hopefully work on the two 
plateform and more an more on Linux (an old dream). Thus I am a newby in 
Linux. I have installed R 2.4 (note that the R-cran repository must be 
added manually to the synaptic package manager - if not one get R 2.3 
from universe).

gdal 1.3.1 has been installed via the synaptic package manager (thus 
most likely well).

The trouble comes installing the package rgdal. I get this message:

The gdal-config script distributed with GDAL could not be found.
If you have not installed the GDAL libraries, you can
download the source from  http://www.gdal.org/
If you have installed the GDAL libraries, then make sure that
gdal-config is in your path. Try typing gdal-config at a
shell prompt and see if it runs. If not, use:
 --configure-args='--with-gdal-config=/usr/local/bin/gdal-config' echo 
with appropriate values for your installation.

ERROR: configuration failed for package 'rgdal'
** Removing '/usr/local/lib/R/site-library/rgdal'

typing gdal-confing at a shell prompt does not run indeed, but I don't 
have the lesser idea of what the next line advised to be used means:
--configure-args='--with-gdal-config=/usr/local/bin/gdal-config' echo

For instance, I have tried 
locate gdal-config
to find were the directory or file mentioned may be found... useless.

I have googled a bit through mailing lists where this question is 
sometime raised, but did not find helpful answers.

Any hint?

Patrick