octave - problem with fsolve

[Malcolm Kay]

I installed octave-2.1.73 under FreeBSD 5.4
using the FreeBSD ports.
This seems to be a very useful mathematical
processor.

Unfortunately the 'fsolve' function seems 
not to work. It seems always to return the
given starting point value and a status of -1.

Is this a known issue?
Does anyone have this working under FreeBSD 5.x?

I see some reference to problems with fsolve when this was first  
converted to a runtime loadable .oct module rather than built in 
to the octave core. However I wonder whether the problem may 
actually be in one of the library ports on which octave depends; 
I'm thinking particularly of the libraries created by the atlas 
port.

Does anyone have any information, suggestions, ideas or fixes for 
this problem? I've explored the internet with respect to this 
problem but not turned up anything useful.

Any response would be appreciated.

Malcolm