Could not determine location of 32-bit or 64-bit GCC (RHEL 5.5)

Scenario
You are running either the new_install or the vac_configure utility to configure the compiler on a computer running RHEL 5.5 when you get at least one of the following error messages:
ERROR: Could not determine location of 32-bit GCC. Suggestion: Ensure 32-bit "glibc-devel", 32-bit
"libstdc++-devel" are installed.  These packages can be obtained from your operating system install media.
ERROR: Could not determine location of 64-bit GCC.  Suggestion: Ensure 64-bit "glibc-devel", 64-bit 
"libstdc++-devel" are installed.  These packages can be obtained from your operating system install media.
ERROR: Please ensure all relevant 32 and 64-bit GCC packages are installed before running "new_install"
again. If they are installed but cannot be detected by "new_install", please run "vac_configure" manually.
Explanation
At least one of the following packages is not installed in the appropriate directory:
  • glibc
  • glibc-devel
  • libgcc
  • libstdc++
  • libstdc++-devel
Action
Verify that the 32-bit and 64-bit glibc, glibc-devel, libgcc, libstdc++ and libstdc++-devel packages are installed on the system by issuing the following command:
  rpm -q --qf '%{NAME}-%{VERSION}-%{RELEASE}-%{ARCH}\n' packagename 
 
where packagename is one of (glibc, glibc-devel, libgcc, libstdc++, libstdc++-devel)
For example, to check whether the required versions of the 32-bit and 64-bit glibc packages are installed on a RHEL 5.5 system run:
rpm -q --qf '%{NAME}-%{VERSION}-%{RELEASE}-%{ARCH}\n' glibc

If both the 32–bit and 64–bit glibc packages are installed, and the packages' version numbers are both 2.5, the expected output is:

glibc-2.5-12-ppc
glibc-2.5-12-ppc64
Note: The 64-bit glibc, glibc-devel, libgcc, libstdc++ and libstdc++-devel packages are available from the installation media provided with the operating system. The package file name indicates whether the package is for 32-bit mode or 64-bit mode. The 64-bit mode package file names are *.ppc64.rpm.

Run new_install or vac_configure again.

The names of RHEL 5.5 packages are structured so that they have the same name regardless whether they are 32-bit or 64-bit packages. As a result, the rpm command's default output will not indicate whether the packages installed on your system are 32-bit, 64-bit or both.