Karl F. Larsen wrote in a message to Mike Bilow:
MB> Your diagnosis is correct, and I believe the 16-bit assembler
MB> "as86" is in what both Red Hat and Debian call the "bin86"
MB> package. Ironically, this same } dependency error also affects
MB> Debian, and I own the bug (35449) on it. The solution is to
MB> manually install the "bin86" package.
KFL> Just a minute. I have never manually installed any bin86 and I
KFL> have compiled kernels that have all the ax25-utils set and I
KFL> get a clean compile. I am using Red Hat version 5.2 and the
KFL> *real* kernel tree, not the one Red Hat sends with it.
KFL> Why do I not get the errors?
My guess is that you did something else which caused the "bin86" package to be
installed, so that you had the "as86" binary available. I can assure you that
you need "as86" to build a kernel on an x86 system: see the make rules for the
"trampoline.*" components in the kernel source if you don't believe me.
Another possibility is that you got a kernel source archive in which someone
else had already done some preliminary things, such as assemble the
"trampoline.*" components, and you didn't "make clean" before building.
Of course, if you are not on x86, you don't need the "trampoline.*" files.
-- Mike