unfortunately I rebooted between when I got the errors, and when I posted. It seems that I managed to install whatever it needed in the meantime because my last attempt worked though it got a kernel panic when I tried to boot to it. I really don't know what it was looking for, and I don't know why auto-apt didn't notice it looking for anything. Maybe because the linux source doesn't use configure scripts. Maybe a virtual package with everything you need to compile vanilla kernels is possible. I think I just needed some random thing. I think perhaps what I did was run apt-get install build-dep kernel-image-2.6.8-1, and that brought in whatever I needed. I'm not sure.
If you use udev then you'll have to update that to 058+, see
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/5/20/180 for more info
Okay thanks.
And sorry for responding directly. I'm not used to using gmail with debian mailing lists, and I haven't setup this machine to access gmail using pop with an MUA I am more familiar with.
