Ok, this is really two questions, one leads to the other.

I want to have APM so my computer automatically turns off, so I type "modprobe apm" as root. I get these errors:
So next I try to compile my own kernel (2.4.20) including APM. I downloaded the kernel source from kernel.org, and followed the steps in the sticky thread in this forum. It seemed to compile and boot fine, but apparently there are no modules, even though I selected to compile stuff (mainly iptables and apm) as modules. In the stock kernel config, I found them in /lib/modules/2.4.18/kernel/arch/i386/kernel/ . That folder doesn't exist for 2.4.20, it only goes as deep as /lib/modules/2.4.20/kernel/ . So I guess my questions are: 1) why do I get this modprobe error, and 2) why did no modules get built? TIA

Hard to tell, really, without "hands on" on your machine...

When you supposedly boot 2.4.20,
what does uname -a output?

You can also check your /usr/src/linux/.config
(you did change the symlink, didn't you?)
grep APM /usr/src/linux/.config and see
whether it got that change right...

And as for why the 2.4.28 kernel doesn't do
it ... maybe your machine doesn't support APM? ;)

What hardware are we looking at?

Cheers,
Tink

I just beat that problem on my laptop. I uncommented the APM line in my rc.modules file and my machines started powering off completely. I have a stock, full Slackware 9 install.

when you recompiled, are you sure you did 'make modules' and 'make modules_install' ? otherwise it sounds like it should have worked - unless your bios is not set up for apm. I had the same problem, but did the same thing as rdanda, and it worked.

At first I didn't change the symlink, so I did and recompiled everything (even modules and modules_install)...same thing. uname -a tells me 2.4.20 (specifically, "Linux cb13474-b 2.4.20 #7 Wed Apr 9 21:42:49 CDT 2003 i686 unknown"). Like I said, everything seems to go fine, but there are no modules, thus generating iptables errors in my firewall script (this is when I first suspected something might be wrong) and "modprobe/insmod apm" says the APM module isn't found. the only one that IS there is ide_scsi. For hardware, I have a Compaq with a 466MHz Celeron, 256 MB RAM, ~10 GB HDD. Don't know much about any other hardware I have. APM (or ACPI, but that's greyed out in xconfig) works fine in Windows 2000, at least my computer powers off smoothly when I hit Shut Down or press the power button.

Hummm ... if you managed to go through
the entire process of kernel compilation,
didn't get any error messages and the kernel
botos fine but you didn't get any modules ...
Did you by any chance compile everything
into the Kernel? How big is your kernel?

Cheers,
Tink

P.S.: My athlon at home and my notebook
both won't power down with apm, I needed
to use ACPI. If you have *both* compiled up
APM makes he race, which leaves ACPI
unused...

I compiled it again, and now there are modules. They also do not work. Depmod gives me this output:
Is there any way I can tell what the unresolved symbols are and fix them?