Installing Alsa Drivers

[Dale Morris <dlm@well.com>]

I'm trying to install the alsa drivers for my yamaha sound card. when
I input ./configure I get this error message:
...
checking for working const... yes
checking for inline... inline
checking whether time.h and sys/time.h may both be included... yes
checking whether gcc needs -traditional... no
checking for directory with kernel source... /usr/src/linux
checking for kernel version... expr: syntax error
expr: syntax error
expr: syntax error
failed (probably missing /usr/src/linux/include/linux/version.h)
debian:/home/dlm/tmp/alsa-driver-0.5.8b# 

What does this mean and what do I do to fix it? 
Thanks
-- dale