I've seen that building macppc kernels too. It only happens if you
   build with "makeoptions DEBUG=-g". Other than that, it doesn't depend
   on specific things, it's just that particular combinations of kernel
   options will make it fail, and other combinations won't. (Possibly
   size related?).


bill s. meantioned this too.  i tired a a small miniroot such that
the kernel was smaller than another kernel that i could strip, but
it didn't make any difference.  as cgd noted, it smells like linker
lossage....