I had a problem with this too, in another way. I had tried to install the latest kernel, as there is a patch for both a printer and ZIP drive to share one parallel port. I needed genksyms from a newer package, since kernel 2.1.29 expects a genksysms with a "-k" switch, which earlier ("modules") versions don't have. This came up when I typed depmod, especially since I typed "y" to the question about module version checking.
Well, to make a long story short, I compiled modutils, and installed them over modules. This didn't work: my kernel 2.1.14's modules wouldn't work. My ZIP drive, printer, PCMCIA modem and so on are module-ified, so I was stuck. I had made another mistake. I had installed the new kernel headers from 2.1.29. I have consistently fought against the debian method of handling headers, but until this problem, that hasn't been a problem. I still will continue to install the headers from the kernel I am trying to install, after I sort out this problem. Anyway, the modutils (newer version of modules) wouldn't work with 2.1.14. It seems that there was a 'temporary' module format in some kernels from about 2.1.8 to about 2.1.(less than 20?). But the newer modutils package would work TO SOME EXTENT with an old 2.0.0 kernel I had kept around. (Some modules would not work). I managed to FTP a copy of the debian libc5-dev package in bo, on a friend's Windows 95 machine. The copy was somehow corrupted, and wouldn't install. I was able to read the file into emacs, gunzip the internal archive, and then untar the gunzipped archive, working around (somehow) the corrupt bytes, and get a copy of "modules.h" from the older kernel headers. After I installed this file in /usr/include/linux, I was able to compile the older modules-2.1.13 package, and have been able to use my 2.1.14 kernel. All for want of a new genksyms. I still am not ready to try another compile. There are some loopholes in all this. I am advised that if I need modules during the changeover, I may need to go back to 2.0.29. This is the only serious problem I have ever had in compiling a number of kernels, and experimenting with modules on many. Alan -- Alan Eugene Davis Marianas High School 15o 8.8'N GMT+10 [EMAIL PROTECTED] AAA 196 Box 10,001 145o 42.5'E Saipan, MP 96950 Northern Mariana Islands "An inviscid theory of flow renders the screw useless, but the need for one nonexistent." ------ Lord Raleigh