configure error: Could not link against boost_system

In my case I was missing some necessary parts of boost. Try executing on Ubuntu/Debian:

sudo apt-get install libboost-system-dev libboost-filesystem-dev libboost-chrono-dev libboost-program-options-dev libboost-test-dev libboost-thread-dev libboost-iostreams-dev

I thought I had it installed but

$ sudo apt-get install libboost1.48-*

fixed the problem for me by installing missing boost packages.

On a Debian based 64-bit machine, the following command fixed this error for me:

  ./configure --with-boost-libdir=/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu