Recompile Ruby  fails with `a local symbol' can not be used when making a shared object; recompile with -fPIC

Hi,
I'm trying to recompile Ruby 1.8.6 on my Linux machine. I have installed once successfully
user@epf:~/migration/soft/ruby-1.8.6> ruby --version
ruby 1.8.6 (2007-03-13 patchlevel 0) [x86_64-linux]
It is sort of working but some things fails. Some ruby commands fail with message that openssl is not installed. So I'm trying to recompile Ruby to add this support.

make then fails with
gcc -shared -rdynamic -Wl,-export-dynamic   -L'../../..' -o ../../../.ext/x86_64-linux/digest/md5.so md5init.o md5ossl.o  -lcrypto  -ldl -lcrypt -lm   -lc
/usr/lib64/gcc/x86_64-suse-linux/4.1.0/../../../../x86_64-suse-linux/bin/ld: /usr/local/lib/libcrypto.a(md5_dgst.o): relocation R_X86_64_32 against `a local symbol' can not be used when making a shared object; recompile with -fPIC
/usr/local/lib/libcrypto.a: could not read symbols: Bad value
collect2: ld returned 1 exit status
make[1]: *** [../../../.ext/x86_64-linux/digest/md5.so] Error 1
make[1]: Leaving directory `/home/user/migration/soft/ruby-1.8.6/ext/digest/md5'

When I try to run the server, it fails with
user@epf:> ruby script/server
=> Booting WEBrick...
/usr/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/rails-2.0.2/lib/initializer.rb:159:in `require_frameworks': no such file to load -- openssl (RuntimeError)
      from /usr/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/rails-2.0.2/lib/initializer.rb:88:in `process'
      from /usr/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/rails-2.0.2/lib/initializer.rb:49:in `send'
      from /usr/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/rails-2.0.2/lib/initializer.rb:49:in `run'
      from /home/user/epfdemo.eclipse.org/releases/20081111183621/config/environment.rb:13
      from /usr/lib/ruby/site_ruby/1.8/rubygems/custom_require.rb:27:in `gem_original_require'
      from /usr/lib/ruby/site_ruby/1.8/rubygems/custom_require.rb:27:in `require'
      from /usr/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/activesupport-2.0.2/lib/active_support/dependencies.rb:496:in `require'
      from /usr/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/activesupport-2.0.2/lib/active_support/dependencies.rb:342:in `new_constants_in'
       ... 7 levels...
      from /usr/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/rails-2.0.2/lib/commands/server.rb:39
      from /usr/lib/ruby/site_ruby/1.8/rubygems/custom_require.rb:27:in `gem_original_require'
      from /usr/lib/ruby/site_ruby/1.8/rubygems/custom_require.rb:27:in `require'
      from script/server:3
user@epf:~/epfdemo.eclipse.org/releases/20081111183621>

Any help, suggestions will be greatly appreciated.