Some good references for compiling from source in debian are: http://myrddin.org/howto/debian-kernel-recompile.php http://www.debian.org/releases/stable/i386/ch08s05.html.en http://www.e-aiyama.com/~toshi/Computer/Linux/KernelCompile.html
Sorry to reply to myself. That last link on the list probably isn't the best one to go off of.
Once I have my .config file created (going through the list takes the longest for me), I run the following script:
------- bin/kernel-compile ------- #!/bin/sh # usage: kernel-compile hostname version
ver=$2 host=$1
if [ ! $1 ] ; then host=`hostname` fi
if [ ! $2 ] ; then ver=0 fi
time nice fakeroot make-kpkg --append_to_version -`date +%Y%m%d` --revision=$host.$ver kernel_image modules_image
-------- end script -----
This nifty script adds the date (YYYYMMDD format), the hostname, and optionally a version number, because I usually only compile kernels once a month (or less often), and it usually takes several compiles before I get the kernel I like.
Jeremy