Binutils were buggy handling a cases involving empty object files.  I've
uploaded fixed binutils 2.8.1 cross-linker packages to oss.sgi.com;  I'll
upload fixed binutils 2.9.5 binaries (mips64 only) later.  The worarounds
for this bug have been removed from the CVS archive that is updating is
required for building a current 2.4 kernel.

  Ralf