can someone help me. Let me try and make this so its clear. Originally I had openssl and openssh that came with redhat 7.2. Then I
rpm -e --nodeps openssl and rpm -e --nodeps openssh.
Then I untarred both new packages to /usr/local/src
For openssl I:
./config --prefix=/srv/secure
--openssldir=/srv/secure/ssl shared
make && make install

later I decided not to have the openssl files anywhere
in the /srv/secure directory so I:
rm -rf /srv/secure
and recompiled openssl like so:
./configure --prefix=/srv/ssl
--openssldir=/srv/ssl/ssldir
make && make install

now when I try to compile openssh with:
./configure --prefix=/srv/ssh \
>--sysconfdir=/srv/ssh/sshdir \
>--with-ssl-dir=/srv/secure

I get this error message:
configure: error: Your OpenSSL headers do not match you libraries

can someone please let me know what is wrong.

Use ./config and ./configure:rolleyes:

Actually the fix was quite easy. I just edited the /etc/ld.so.conf file and added the path to my openssl's libraries (/srv/ssl/lib) and then run ldconfig and now openssh installs with no errors.

You could have also just gotten rid of your redundant copies of the older OpenSSL libs or removed them, installed OpenSSL then. You will probably get errors if you do that, but remember the order of things and make sure it used the newest OpenSSL version on compile. Well, the important thing is that you upgraded. :-)