Nokogiri xml parser challenges

Hi. Could someone please help me with getting the nokogiri parser
working?
Just ask me if you need more information. Thanks.

nokogiri installation challenges

xxx:~$ gem list

*** LOCAL GEMS ***

mkrf (0.2.3)
rake (0.8.7)
wx_sugar (0.1.22)
wxruby-ruby19 (2.0.1)

xxx:~$ sudo gem install nokogiri
Building native extensions. This could take a while…
ERROR: Error installing nokogiri:
ERROR: Failed to build gem native extension.

/usr/bin/ruby1.9.1 extconf.rb
extconf.rb:5:in require': no such file to load -- mkmf (LoadError) from extconf.rb:5:in

Gem files will remain installed in
/var/lib/gems/1.9.1/gems/nokogiri-1.4.0
for inspection.
Results logged to
/var/lib/gems/1.9.1/gems/nokogiri-1.4.0/ext/nokogiri/gem_make.out

xxx:~$ cat
/var/lib/gems/1.9.1/gems/nokogiri-1.4.0/ext/nokogiri/gem_make.out
/usr/bin/ruby1.9.1 extconf.rb
extconf.rb:5:in require': no such file to load -- mkmf (LoadError) from extconf.rb:5:in

xxx:~$ TestNok.rb
TestNok.rb:2:in require': no such file to load -- nokogiri (LoadError) from TestNok.rb:2:in

TestNok.rb file:

require ‘rubygems’
require ‘nokogiri’

class Score_Data
…etc

From synaptic package manager
=============================
libnokoiri-ruby 1.3.1-1 installed
libnokogiri-ruby1.8 1.3.1-1 installed
libnokogiri-ruby 1.3.1-1 installed

Linux System: Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic

xxx:~$ cat .bashrc


PATH=/opt/bin:$PATH
PATH=/home/myhome/gems/gems/wx_sugar-0.1.22/bin:$PATH
LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/opt/lib:$LD_LIBRARY_PATH
export GEM_HOME=/home/myhome/gems

xxx:~$ sudo gem install nokogiri
Building native extensions. This could take a while…
ERROR: Error installing nokogiri:
ERROR: Failed to build gem native extension.

/usr/bin/ruby1.9.1 extconf.rb
extconf.rb:5:in require': no such file to load -- mkmf (LoadError) from extconf.rb:5:in