This package is known to behave badly when you have changed its default optimization flags (including the -march and -mcpu options). Therefore, if you have defined any environment variables that override default optimizations, such as CFLAGS and CXXFLAGS, we recommend unsetting or modifying them when building binutils. It is recommended by the Binutils installation documentation to build Binutils outside of the source directory: mkdir ../binutils-build && cd ../binutils-build Next, prepare Binutils to be compiled: CFLAGS="-O2 -pipe" \     ../binutils-&binutils-version;/configure \     --prefix=/usr --mandir=/usr/share/man \     --infodir=/usr/share/info --enable-shared Continue with compiling the package: make LDFLAGS="-s" make -k check Normally, the tooldir (the directory where the executables end up) is set to $(exec_prefix)/$(target_alias) which expands into, for example, /usr/i686-pc-linux-gnu. Since we only build for our own system, we don't need this target specific directory in /usr. That setup would be used if the system was used to cross-compile (for example compiling a package on the Intel machine that generates code that can be executed on Apple PowerPC machines). Install the package: make install rm /usr/lib/libiberty.a