I was recompling the kernel on the GuruPlug I use as a router from Squeeze's linux-source package in order to add support for br2684.ko when I ran into an error very similar to this one. The build process complained "/bin/sh: arm-linux-gnueabi-ld: not found". It appears that the build process thinks the host architecture is arm and the targets the entirely distinct armel and it needs to cross-compile. I got past this by specfying --arch armel on the make-kpkg command line since the native binutils and gcc produce armel code.