building 2.1 with LFS

[John Hunter]

I am trying to build python2.1 with alrge file support. I ran
configure in a clean build tree and then edited the makefile

# Compiler options
OPT= -ggdb -O3 -Wall -Wstrict-prototypes -D_LARGEFILE_SOURCE -D_FILE_OFFSET_BITS=64
#OPT= -g -O2 -Wall -Wstrict-prototypes
DEFS= -DHAVE_CONFIG_H
CFLAGS= $(OPT) -I. -I$(srcdir)/Include $(DEFS)
And did a make; make install
I specify the full path to the python executable, but my test for LFS
comes up negative

[root@bace root]# /usr/local/bin/python2.1
Python 2.1.3 (#1, Aug 25 2004, 10:01:39)
[GCC 3.2 20020903 (Red Hat Linux 8.0 3.2-7)] on linux2
Type "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.

fd = open('/dev/null', 'rw')
fd.tell()

As you can see from the build date, this was the python I just built.

Any ideas what I'm doing wrong. This is an incantation I've used
successfully before, so I am mystified.
I guess the best guess is that my kernel does support LFS

[root@bace root]# uname -a
Linux bace.bsd.uchicago.edu 2.4.18-14 #1 Wed Sep 4 12:13:11 EDT 2002 i686 athlon i386 GNU/Linux

Is there an easy test for this?

Thanks!
JDH