Configuration error when compiling octave with BLAS and LAPACK libraries

Do take a look at the Compiling Octave from Source on CentOS 5. However you make face an error such as
" configure: error: You are required to have BLAS and LAPACK libraries ".

This is due to the missing link. For more information on this error, you may want to take some hints from 
Cannot find -llapack when doing /usr/bin/ld on CentOS 5

In other words, just go to /usr/lib64 and do a softlink for the lapack library

ln -s /usr/lib64/liblapack.so.3 /usr/lib64/liblapack.so