Nicolas, thanks again for the pointers.  After you first introduced me to
$PATH I researched it and actually come across the means of appending the
PATH.  However, my thinking at the time was that it wasn't a good idea for
me because I will eventually need to install this command line version on
15 computers in my lab at school.  I figured I could save a step by
avoiding the need to add /usr/local/bin on each machine.   But now I see it
is better to not fight a standard and so I took your advice and did this on
a second machine by just using the vi editor on the /etc/csh.login document
(I hope that is okay).  And even though the "make check" still didn't work,
povray worked flawlessly and I didn't even have to do anything special to
show it where the include files were.

Thorsten is correct that on the MacOSX systems the root account is disabled
by default in order to prevent users from doing things they shouldn't with
the system files.  On the other hand, the primary user has so-called
"adminstrator" priveledes similar to root including 'sudo' (but not 'su' -
yet, another point that might affect a would-be mac-based user wanting to
install the command-line version since the installer step 3 is "su").
Still, perhaps most people fiddling around with the terminal application in
OSX will have enabled the root account (which is very easy to do).

Finally, I just did a quick search online and discovered that beginning with
OSX 10.2 (we are now in version 10.3) /usr/local/bin is "no longer part of
the default environment variables".  So, this issue will probably end up
being a problem for anyone like me who doesn't really know what they are
doing :).  Should the INSTALL document point this out or does this affect
too few people?
thanks again for all of your help.
chris

ps, since I mentioned it, can I impose on you to suggest any UNIX resources
that deal with installing software on multiple machines across a network?
I have heard of 'shell scripts' before and I am wondering if this is the
direction I need to research.

Post a reply to this message