Local symbol botch

[utzoo!decvax!duke!unc!lhn]

I am having trouble generating f77 and f77pass1 on an 11/23
running 2.8bsd.  The problem I run into is that the loader
complains about
Local symbol botch
while it is going thru the libovc.a to resolve external
references.  I am using ovcompall and ovmklib to generate said
libovc.a  ...   Can anyone help with suggestions?  I am
stumped.
  By the way, as Chris Kent mentioned long ago, I had to
fix the shell script (yes, not a make file) ovcompall
so that as would be called for *.s files...

I am pulling my hair out.  Also lack of sleep does not help.
Anyone?