ar: Error: malformed archive (at 138288)

[Teressa Griffin]

I am trying to build gcc 2.95.1 on an Dec Alpha running Digital unix,
V4.0 OSF1.   I am not at all familiar with this version of Unix.  I have
built gcc 2.95.1 on both AIX 4.2.1 and Solaris 2.6 with no problems.
When I do the make bootstrap on the Digital box I get the following
error well into the make:

ar: Error: malformed archive (at 138288)

Any ideas?  I am not even sure where to begin looking.  A which ar
returns /usr/bin/ar.

Teressa