The oacs-5-8b was used so I can compare with a working install from 21 July.
I suspected environmental variables, but a working and nonworking share the same ubuntu, only differing in the config.tcl file and oacs-5-8 files from cvs.
I had also spent some time diagnosing on freebsd10 with a working diagnosis that there was a silent error with clang or gcc build, since there is a local working installation from a few days ago on ubuntu.. and freebsd10 no longer includes gcc by default..