[R] problem updating packages on Ubuntu 7.10

[Daniel Nordlund]

I am running Ubuntu 7.10 and R-2.6.0, and I am having trouble updating packages.  There appears to be a problem involving gfortran.  For example, here is the output of an attempt to update the Hmisc package.

* Installing *source* package 'Hmisc' ...
** libs
gfortran   -fpic  -g -O2 -c cidxcn.f -o cidxcn.o
gfortran   -fpic  -g -O2 -c cidxcp.f -o cidxcp.o
gfortran   -fpic  -g -O2 -c hoeffd.f -o hoeffd.o
gfortran   -fpic  -g -O2 -c jacklins.f -o jacklins.o
gfortran   -fpic  -g -O2 -c largrec.f -o largrec.o
gcc -std=gnu99 -I/usr/share/R/include -I/usr/share/R/include      -fpic  -g -O2 -c ranksort.c -o ranksort.o
gfortran   -fpic  -g -O2 -c rcorr.f -o rcorr.o
gfortran   -fpic  -g -O2 -c wclosest.f -o wclosest.o
gcc -std=gnu99 -shared  -o Hmisc.so cidxcn.o cidxcp.o hoeffd.o jacklins.o largrec.o ranksort.o rcorr.o wclosest.o  -lgfortran -lm -lgcc_s -L/usr/lib/R/lib -lR
/usr/bin/ld: cannot find -lgfortran
collect2: ld returned 1 exit status
make: *** [Hmisc.so] Error 1
ERROR: compilation failed for package 'Hmisc'
** Removing '/usr/local/lib/R/site-library/Hmisc'
** Restoring previous '/usr/local/lib/R/site-library/Hmisc'

The downloaded packages are in
        /tmp/RtmpkaH0Db/downloaded_packages
Warning message:
In install.packages(update[instlib == l, "Package"], l, contriburl = contriburl,  :
  installation of package 'Hmisc' had non-zero exit status
>

I tried searching on the error message 

/usr/bin/ld: cannot find -lgfortran

along with R and Ubuntu and was not able to find anything that was helpful to me.  I have successfully updated packages on Ubuntu 6.10 and 7.04.  I am sure somebody knows what is happening here, and I would appreciate any pointers to what I am doing wrong.

Thanks,

Dan

Daniel Nordlund
Bothell, WA