Problems Configuring GCC

[wezy726]

Greetings, all.  I am trying to build 
gcc-2.95.2 along with a slew of other programming utils in an attempt to make a 
"linux from scratch" system.  In order to do this, I figured I would try 
gcc's ability to make other needed programs if there is a link to them in the 
top level gcc src tree.  My problem is not with the actual compilation 
(yet); the configure script breaks when trying to configure gzip.
Starting from a plain RadHat 7.0 dist, here's what 
I did:
 
Create a suitable directory to install new system 
(henceforth called LFS).
 
Populate LFS with dir structure (/bin, /usr, et 
al), basic static binaries (make, gcc-2.96-69(RedHat's latest gcc spin-off), 
binutils, texinfo, gawk, sed, grep, flex, fileutils, textutils, shellutils, 
bash, bzip2, diffutils), and libraries (glibc-2.2.1 w/ linuxthreads add-on and 
linux-2.4.2 w/ crypto patch)
 
Unpack gcc, gzip, autoconf, automake, bash, 
binutils, bison, bzip2, fileutils, findutils, flex, gawk, gettext, grep, 
libtool, m4, make, patch, perl, sed, sh-utils, tar, texinfo, and textutils into 
LFS/usr/src
 
Place symbolic links to the directories created in 
the gcc-2.95.2 dir.  The links are named what they link to sans 
version.
i.e. gcc-2.95.2/gzip is a symbolic link to 
../gzip-1.2.4a
 
I then chrooted to LFS, what follows are my command 
lines:
 
mkdir /usr/src/objdir
 
cd /usr/src/objdir
 
../gcc*/configure --enable-shared --with-gnu-as 
--with-gnu-ld i686-pc-linux-gnu
 
The configure script runs and, of course, vomits 
everything to the screen.
The last three lines before breaking 
are:
 
Configuring gzip...
configure: 
gcc-version-trigger=/usr/src/gcc-2.95.2/gcc/version.c: invalid package 
name
Configure in /usr/src/objdir/gzip failed, 
exiting.
 
The version.c file (as you probably know) contains 
the single line:
 
char *version_string = "2.95.2 19991024 
(release)";
 
This is where I get stumped...  Any insight 
into this matter will be greatly appreciated.
 
PS --  In case you are wondering, every 
program I listed is the latest version from metalab.unc.edu except the RedHat 
gcc, but that is not being used after one successful pass through the 
compilation process.
 
PPS -- I realize now that there is a patch 
necessary to compile gcc-2.95.2 using glibc-2.2.1 which I hve not applied.  
However, the system broke before compilation begun so I do not think the patch 
is the problem here.