Linux / libxpistub.so, Error ~618 xpistub

I am not sure I am in the correct newsgroup, but this problem seems to
stem from the XPInstall shared library.  The Netscape/Mozilla installers
fail every time with "Fatal error [~618]: Couldn't open xpistub
library", this is not specific to my installation (libxpistub.so is in
my standard library path and is in ld.so.conf, and several posters have
similar messages w/o a response or fix - google of "~618 xpistub" turns
up bad installs from back in 2001); I am wondering if this is a result 
of version mismatch of the shared library, my current installation is
Netscape 7.02 (Gecko/20030208).  Also the installations fail on
Extration of libplc4.so (which is also in my std lib path).  I cannot
find any options for turning on debug or verbose reporting.  Any
thoughts/fixes/redirection would be appreciated.  I have tried clean
install path using different options for install each time, I have even 
extracted xpcom.xpi and manually installed the shared libraries.  I have 
used both -bin and -install binaries for the installation, both failing.