Check to be sure the /dev/vme... files have their permissions set to 666. If not, the shell utilities will return a * in place of data to indicate an error condition similar to a VME bus error.
Right now it doesn't. However, we are planning to get that part going soon. Please be patient.
RedHat 5.1 includes a new compiler. If you manually edit the Makefile in each directory to call up the new egcs compiler, things should compile. We fully intend to support RedHat 5.1 installations, but for now I suggest using 5.0 or Slackware.