On Mon, Mar 03, 2003 at 05:11:10PM -0500, Bill Davidsen wrote:
> scripts/Makefile.modinst:16: *** Uh-oh, you have stale module entries. You
messed with SUBDIRS, do not complain if something goes wrong.

This happens if you have encountered a compile error in a module.
In this case you did not succeed the compilation of fs/binfmt_aout,
and therefore no .o file can be located.
kbuild assumes this is because you have messed with SUBDIRS, which is wrong.