"configure: error: libnl and libnl-genl are required but were not found"

Question

I'm trying to configure powertop-2.5 but when I run ./configure I get a "configure: error: libnl and libnl-genl are required but were not found" error

I've run

sudo apt-get install libtool autoconf libnl-dev ncurses-dev pciutils-dev build-essential -y

as was recommended by these guys but I get the same error.

I ran

sudo apt-get install libnl-genl-3-dev

Which replaced the previous libnl file but I still get the config error.

According to this, powertop has (or had) problems with detecting libnl but I can't figure out how to fix it.

I'm currently running Linux username 3.2.0-4-686-pae #1 SMP Debian 3.2.51-1 i686 GNU/Linux

Answer 1

My problem was solved from this: https://github.com/OpenVPN/openvpn/issues/266

sudo apt-get install pkg-config libnl-3-dev libcap-ng-dev libssl-dev liblzo2-dev libpam0g-dev
sudo apt install liblz4-dev

Answer 2

The use of pkg-config made the trick. I was able to install Powertop 2.7.

Answer 3

Probably the problem is the lack of the pkg-config application in your system (which is used to find the proper dependencies with the configure script). I just have the same problem in a fresh installed Ubuntu 14.04 system, and after installing the pkg-config package the configure script finalized successfully its work. Then I could compile and install the last version (2.6.1) of powertop.

Answer 4

I see you tried libnl-dev, maybe try libnl-3-dev instead:

sudo apt-get install libnl-3-dev libnl-genl-3-dev 

Answer 5

I "solved" my problem by installing powertop-2.0 instead.