I'm still tracking down the details, but it appears that recent versions of the linux kernel headers fail to include /usr/include/asm/page.h. The lack of that file cause my perl 5.8.8 build to fail, SysV.xs (or something similar) was including that header file. For now I'm going with the 2.6.17 headers and the 2.6.22 kernel (installed via Gentoo).
This is known and fixed for more than a year now. See http://public.activestate.com/cgi-bin/perlbrowse/p/31702
