[0]PETSC ERROR: Libraries linked from /build/buildd/petsc-3.0.0.dfsg/linux-gnu-c-opt/lib but your PETSC_DIR is set to /usr/local/petsc-3.0.0-p12 My guess is that you are picking up the system version of petsc. To get around that, set LD_LIBRARY_PATH to something like export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/usr/local/petsc-3.0.0-p12/linux-gnu-c-debug/lib Cheers, Walter Landry walter at geodynamics.org