kernel source location

[Russell <rjshaw@iprimus.com.au>]

Hi,

In my debian 3 system, i've got no /usr/src/linux directory
or symlink. In what situations do i need the kernel source
here?

Do the 'generic' kernel compiling/installation instructions such
as at http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/Kernel-HOWTO.html apply ok to
a debian system?

Do i need /usr/include/linux and /usr/include/asm ? Do they need
to be the same version as the currently running kernel?
(i think on other systems these are provided in the
kernel source directly)

I found some interesting things from
  http://www.opensound.com/linux-x86.html :

 The problem under Debian and SuSE is that the linux kernel is
 not installed under /usr/src/linux - so you just need to ensure
 that /usr/src/linux links to the directory containing the Linux
 kernel sources. Additionally, Debian and SuSE ships with
 /usr/include/linux and /usr/include/asm that are directories
 that are the header files that are used to build Debian or SuSE.
 These technically should be the header files from the kernel
 source tree so you really have to remove these directories and
 link /usr/include/linux and /usr/include/asm to the kernel
 source directory. Please follow the steps below. 

   ln -s /usr/src/linux-x.x.x /usr/src/linux (where x.x.x is the kernel version,
     eg: ln -s /usr/src/linux-2.2.17 /usr/src/linux)
   mv /usr/include/linux /usr/include/linux.orig
   mv /usr/include/asm /usr/include/asm.orig
   ln -s /usr/src/linux/include/linux /usr/include/linux
   ln -s /usr/src/linux/include/asm /usr/include/asm