problems installing software
 

i hate being newbie about things, so i hope i'm not bugging too much of you guys, but i have had a hard time installing software in general. but one thing i want to get up and running in general is my sound card. I have a Soundblaster Live! and i am trying to make it work with Mandrake 10. i have downloaded this emu10k1 thing that i found to get. i have it in tar.gz and i also got a second version in rpm. but, no matter what i do, they will not install, and further more, i cannot configure them, and furthermore, i cannot here sound. is there any help on this, am i going about this the totally wrong way?

ps. for the tar, i extract it, and there is a bunch of *.c and *.h files, no real ./config file or anything
and i run 'rpm -iv <emu-whatever>' and sometimes 'rpm -iv --force <emu-whatever>' but they say nothing, them when i do 'rpm -qi <emu-whatever>' it says it is not installed. and i am in the su mode.

First thing, you probably already have it installed. It's not a package - it's part of kernel modules. You should be able to load the module this way (as root, so you probably need to 'su' before):
The only reason you may need to compile it yourself is that you're affected by a bug or only a newer version supports your card.

If you'd really like to compile it, check if there's 'Makefile' (should be also README or INSTALL with instruction). If Makfile exists, you can probably compile it using

i tried the modprobe cmd and nothing happened. also, i ran make in the uncompressed targz file and it gave me this error:

/lib/modules/2.6.3-7mdk/build directory does not exist. Please edit the file 'config' in this directory and set the KERNEL_SOURCE to the correct location of your kernel source.
You are currently running kernel version 2.6.3-7mdk, the source code should be for this version.

I can get into the config file obviously, but i don't exactly know what a kernel source is, and where i can find it to put it into the config file. any help would be great.

pguru; have u tried ;http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/HOWTO-INDEX sections
4.1.4,4.1.5,4.2,4.2.1and 4.3.19 may help but if u do not then search but this points to some help!

thanks

That's good. It means the module was successfully loaded.