This is a build failure found preparing SGI Lustre 2.4.1 :

checking for /usr/src/kernel-source/2.6.32-358.18.1.el6sgi241a15.rhel6.x86_64.lustre/include/linux/migrate.h... yes
checking if address_space_operations.migratepage has 4 args... no
checking if super_operations use dentry as parameter... no
checking if inode_operations use umode_t as parameter... no
checking if touch_atime use one argument... no
checking if have d_make_root... no
checking if kmap_atomic has only 1 argument... no
checking if have clear_inode... yes
checking if encode_fh have parent inode as parameter... no
checking if kernel has generic_file_llseek_size with 5 args... no
checking if i_dentry/d_alias uses hlist... no
checking if dentry_open uses struct path as first argument... no
checking if iop has atomic_open... no
checking if Linux was built with symbol dev_set_rdonly exported... no
configure: WARNING: kernel missing dev_set_rdonly patch for testing

This is the test:
grep -q -E '[[:space:]]dev_set_rdonly[[:space:]]' $LINUX/$SYMVERFILE 2>/dev/null

And we do have the symbol:

schamp@ltest-admin:/home/lwork/schamp/stout7-sgilustre-2.4.1/bldroot.rhel64/boot $ gunzip -c symvers-2.6.32-358.18.1.el6sgi241a15.rhel6.x86_64.lustre.gz | grep '[[:space:]]dev_set_rdonly[[:space:]]'
0x6e7378b8 dev_set_rdonly vmlinux EXPORT_SYMBOL

I bet it screws up the symvers:
checking name of module symbol version file... Module.symvers

--with-linux=/usr/src/kernel-source/2.6.32-358.18.1.el6sgi241a15.rhel6.x86_64.lustre/
so it looks at
/usr/src/kernel-source/2.6.32-358.18.1.el6sgi241a15.rhel6.x86_64.lustre/Module.symvers

Which doesn't exist, because the symver is in the object directory, not
the source directory - a problem which doesn't show up in the Intel build
process because it uses the same directory for both, even though vendors package them separately.

This is likely a problem not only for SGI's internal build process, but for anyone who builds server packages against installed kernel packages instead of the intermediate kernel build objects.

Patch coming right up.