Did you set the target triple correctly?
Well, i'm trying to do it using the Debian Way... I issue this command: # env DEB_CROSS_BOOTSTRAP=yes dpkg-buildpackage -uc -us -rfakeroot -aarmel -b -d I had to tweak dpkg (1.14 from Debian SVN) cputable in order to accept armel. FYI, my host is an i386 chroot inside an AMD64.