I can confirm it, but it looks like a ppc ld bug in handling of the compatibility aixdesc ABI.
Shorter testcase:

rpm2cpio glibc-2.12*.ppc64.rpm | cpio -id
cd lib64
ln -sf libc-2.12.so libc.so
ln -sf libdl-2.12.so libdl.so
cat > test.c <<\EOF
extern char *dlerror (void);
volatile int i;

void _start (void)
{
  if (dlerror ())
    i++;
}
EOF
gcc -c -m64 test.c -o test.o
ld -o test -L . -ldl test.o -lc ./ld64.so.1
ld -o test -L . -ldl test.o -ldl -lc ./ld64.so.1
ld -o test -L . test.o -ldl -lc ./ld64.so.1
gcc -c -m64 -mcall=aixdesc -o test.o
ld -o test -L . -ldl test.o -lc ./ld64.so.1
ld -o test -L . -ldl test.o -ldl -lc ./ld64.so.1
ld -o test -L . test.o -ldl -lc ./ld64.so.1

Reproduced also with a cross-compiler (4.7 trunk from today) and cross-binutils (CVS HEAD from today).  Wonder why the *.a library is built with the old ABI though, AFAIK already RHEL4 GA switched from the .symbol stuff.

(In reply to comment #2)

> Wonder why the *.a library is built with the old ABI
> though, AFAIK already RHEL4 GA switched from the .symbol stuff.

The problem occurs with several versions of the *.a library, the build environments for the libraries are:
SLES9 SP2, gcc 3.3.3, glibc-2.3.3-98-47 to
SLES9 SP4, gcc 4.1.2, glibc-2.3.3-98.94

- Elmar.

Support for non-DOT_SYMBOLS first appeared in gcc 4.0 (and has been backported into gcc 3.4-RH (and perhaps some other compilers).  But the linker has to support it, so perhaps if SLES9 ld doesn't support those, then even gcc 4.1.2 built there won't support DOT_SYMBOLS.

Since RHEL 6.1 External Beta has begun, and this bug remains
unresolved, it has been rejected as it is not proposed as
exception or blocker.

Red Hat invites you to ask your support representative to
propose this request, if appropriate and relevant, in the
next release of Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

Alan Modra has fixed this upstream: http://sources.redhat.com/ml/binutils/2011-05/msg00044.html

Since the problem described in this bug report should be
resolved in a recent advisory, it has been closed with a
resolution of ERRATA.

For information on the advisory, and where to find the updated
files, follow the link below.

If the solution does not work for you, open a new bug report.

http://rhn.redhat.com/errata/RHBA-2011-1523.html