Well I just installed version 2.6.4 of the kernel and I am trying to upgrade the alsa driver but when I run ./configure I get this error:

checking for kernel version... The file /lib/modules/2.6.4-0-default/build/include/linux/version.h does not exist.
Please, install the package with full kernel sources for your distribution
or use --with-kernel=dir option to specify another directory with kernel
sources (default is /usr/src/linux).

Anybody know what to do about this?

What distrobution did you use and how did you install the kernel? From source or a package? Which program are you actually trying to configure there? If it was a package, did you install the kernel source as well?

Do what it says:

> checking for kernel version... The file /lib/modules/2.6.4-0-default/build/include/linux/version.h does not exist

so does that file in actuality exist? Do you have the kernel source installed somewhere? Does it exist in a place other than the path above? You could try refreshing your slocate database with "su -c locate -u" and then using "locate version.h" to see if the file exists somewhere.

If it doesn't exist, then I guess you need to:

> Please, install the package with full kernel sources for your distribution

If it does exist, then modify your ./configure with:

> or use --with-kernel=dir option to specify another directory with kernel
sources (default is /usr/src/linux).

where dir is the path to wherever the kernel source is on your system.

First off thanks for the detailed response. I used the SUSE Linux 9.0.42 (i586) distro and I installed it from package (both the default and the source). The version.h file does not exist in the directory specified and I wasn't able to find it anywhere else. I don't even know why it would be installed anywhere else because I didn't change the install path for the kernel.

Any idea what "Please, install the package with full kernel sources for your distribution" actually means? I thought the rpms had everything I needed

Normally if you install a kernel as a precompiled package (eg an rpm) rather than compiling it from source yourself, you have to install two packages - one is the kernel binary, and the other is the source code for that kernel (usually a pretty large package). It looks like you've installed the kernel binary but not the correct kernel source code package for that kernel. You'll need to find and install the correct kernel source package in order to compile the alsa drivers and other software.

You are using SuSE 9.0, right? Then you may download and install precompiled alsa-packages from ftp://ftp.suse.com/pub/people/kraxel/ (or one of the mirror). For this procedure you will not need the kernel source.