The link stage for gmetad, gmond, and gmetric all fail on openbsd due to
missing
libraries in the link command.  Specifically, during the final link step:
  gmetric and gmetad needs "-lintl -liconv"
  gmond needs "-lm -lintl -liconv -lutil"

Once these are added, the binaries all compile.

this seems like the known build errors that had been worked around in OpenBSD
because of a broken libconfuse package, but combined with a broken gcc as well
(at least for -lm).

could you provide at least the version of OpenBSD that this is reported for and
explain why if there is such an easy workaround, which is documented in the
configure script, this (if valid) is a major severity bug?

Openbsd 4.1

I list it as "major" since the problem prevents compiling Ganglia on this
version of OpenBSD.

Here is the full configure invocation I'm using:

./configure \
    CC='ccache gcc' CXX='ccache g++' \
    CFLAGS='-O2 -I/usr/local/include -I/usr/X11R6/include
-I/usr/local/include/python2.5 -g' \
    LDFLAGS='-L/usr/local/lib -L/usr/X11R6/lib -L/usr/local/lib/python2.5 ' \
    --with-gmetad                                  \
    --with-libconfuse=/usr/local                    \
    --with-libexpat=/usr/local                      \
    --with-librrd=/usr/local                     
 
The version of libconfuse in question is 2.5p0.  GCC is version 3.3.5.  I
believe thatboth of these are the stock versions shipped in /usr/ports.

This is mentioned, briefly, under the "Solaris" section in the
ganglia.{html,pod} files.  It is not mentioned in "INSTALL", nor anywhere with
regards to any of the BSD (although there is a mention that is not necessarily
Solaris-specific).  Nor is a workaround mentioned.

IMO, there should either: 

1) detect that there is a problem, and compensate accordingly using the fix I
provided.

2) failing that, include a notice somewhere that OpenBSD 4.1 (and any other OS
with this problem) needs "help" to compile, and include instructions for a
workaround (as I've included above).

suggestion "1" was implemented in May 4th (using a prototype time machine) and
had confirmed it working (again) by having it building 3.1.0 (no python or gmetad)
and using the OpenBSD provided packages for all other dependencies by running :

  ./configure --with-libconfuse=/usr/local --with-libexpat=/usr/local
--with-libapr=/usr/local/bin/apr-1-config

suggestion "2" has been added to the release notes just in case it wasn't clear
enough already by the other documentation.

# uname -a                                                                      
OpenBSD qemu.sajinet.com.pe 4.1 GENERIC#1435 i386
# pkg_info                                                                      
apr-1.2.7           Apache Portable Runtime                                     
expat-2.0.0         XML 1.0 parser written in C                                 
gd-2.0.34p1         library for dynamic creation of images                      
gettext-0.14.6      GNU gettext                                                 
jpeg-6bp3           IJG's JPEG compression utilities                            
libconfuse-2.5p0    configuration file parser library                           
libiconv-1.9.2p3    character set conversion library                            
png-1.2.14p1        library for manipulating PNG images                         
python-2.5p3        interpreted object-oriented programming language            
rrdtool-1.0.49p3    system to store and display time-series data
# ./configure --with-libconfuse=/usr/local --with-libexpat=/usr/local
--with-libapr=/usr/local/bin/apr-1-config
--with-python=/usr/local/bin/python2.5
--with-librrd=/usr/local --with-gmetad
# make install
# /usr/sbin/gmond -V                                                            
gmond 3.1.0              

and just for completeness :

# /usr/sbin/gmetad -V                                                           
gmetad 3.1.0
# /usr/bin/gmetric -V                                                           
gmetric 3.1.0                                                                   
# /usr/bin/gstat -V                                                             
gstat 3.1.0