What version is your locore.s?  Look for the code at ENTRY(_trap_flag).
If it has a #if SMALL_INV, then it is correct (as long as SMALL_INV is
not defined.)  If it does not have that, it has a shared lib bug in it 
and you need to get a copy of the -current version.

As for ld, make sure that when you try to link in .../gnu/usr.bin/ld it
does not have a local ld in the directory.  It will use that one if possible.

>I'm beginning to worry that I might need to pull some binaries out of
>the distribution tar files...
Yup, at one point when I was trying to get shared libs working on my machine,
I had to reload all of comp.tar.gz from 1.0!

--Phil