liuhui@pine:~/bin/cufflinks-master$ ./configure --with-bam=/usr/local/include/bam
checking for a BSD-compatible install... /usr/bin/install -c
checking whether build environment is sane... yes
checking for a thread-safe mkdir -p... /bin/mkdir -p
checking for gawk... no
checking for mawk... mawk
checking whether make sets $(MAKE)... yes
checking for gawk... (cached) mawk
checking for g++... g++
checking whether the C++ compiler works... yes
checking for C++ compiler default output file name... a.out
checking for suffix of executables...
checking whether we are cross compiling... no
checking for suffix of object files... o
checking whether we are using the GNU C++ compiler... yes
checking whether g++ accepts -g... yes
checking for style of include used by make... GNU
checking dependency style of g++... gcc3
checking for gcc... gcc
checking whether we are using the GNU C compiler... yes
checking whether gcc accepts -g... yes
checking for gcc option to accept ISO C89... none needed
checking dependency style of gcc... gcc3
checking whether make sets $(MAKE)... (cached) yes
checking for ranlib... ranlib
checking for ar... ar
checking the archiver (ar) interface... ar
checking for a Python interpreter with version >= 2.4... python
checking for python... /usr/bin/python
checking for python version... 2.7
checking for python platform... linux2
checking for python script directory... ${prefix}/lib/python2.7/dist-packages
checking for python extension module directory... ${exec_prefix}/lib/python2.7/dist-packages
checking for boostlib >= 1.47.0... yes
checking for bamlib... configure: error: We could not detect the bam libraries (version or higher). If you have a staged bam library (still not installed) please specify $BAM_ROOT in your environment and do not give a PATH to --with-bam option. If you are sure you have bam installed, then check your version number looking in <bam/version.hpp>. See http://randspringer.de/bam for more documentation.
Fixed it by modifying the read permissions
chmod 755 /usr/local/lib/libbam.a
chmod 755 /usr/local/include/bam/*.h
