make install bug?

When building kernels for my servers I have always done this:

make INSTALL_MOD_PATH=/usr/src/<target-hostname> modules_install

to dump all the modules into an easily tarballable directory to be scp'd to the target host.

However for some reason today it's tried to do a depmod on the kernel building machine:

make -C arch/i386/lib modules_install
make[1]: Entering directory `/VNetLinux/linux-2.4.18/arch/i386/lib'
make[1]: Nothing to be done for `modules_install'.
make[1]: Leaving directory `/VNetLinux/linux-2.4.18/arch/i386/lib'
cd /VNetLinux/scout/lib/modules/2.4.18; \
mkdir -p pcmcia; \
find kernel -path '*/pcmcia/*' -name '*.o' | xargs -i -r ln -sf ../{} pcmcia if [ -r System.map ]; then /sbin/depmod -ae -F System.map -b /VNetLinux/scout -r 2.4.18; fi

depmod: *** Unresolved symbols in /VNetLinux/scout/lib/modules/2.4.18/pcmcia/3c575_cb.o
depmod:         pcibios_read_config_byte
depmod:         pcibios_write_config_word
depmod:         pcibios_read_config_dword
depmod:         pcibios_write_config_byte
depmod:         pcibios_write_config_dword
depmod:         pcibios_read_config_word
depmod: *** Unresolved symbols in /VNetLinux/scout/lib/modules/2.4.18/pcmcia/aha152x_cs.o
depmod:         print_msg
depmod:         scsi_command_size
depmod:         scsi_unregister_module
depmod:         scsicam_bios_param

And so forth....

I'm not sure why this started happening, but it isn't nice behavior at all. I'd call it a bug as I can't imagine why I'd want a depmod to occur on the build machine.

Have I managed to tickle something that should not be happening?

Hmmm, I think I failed to engage brain before fingers. Sent the files to a non-existant directory... which might be the thing that tickled it to do the depmod?

depmod runs at build time as a courtesy, to build the modules.dep for the initial boot, otherwise you get warning messages on the first boot of a new kernel. For cross compiling or building for a different machine, you can turn depmod into a no-op with make DEPMOD=/bin/true.