Compiling nvidia driver for custom kernel

Question

I have a Toshiba M200 tablet PC running Arch Linux (which I love, btw) and it's running fine, including the tablet.
There's an irritating bug with suspend-to-ram (suspend-to-disk doesn't work with the nvidia driver) where the tablet pen stops working after resume.
There's a patch slated to be in some future kernel, but I compiled my own with that patch included. It boots fine and all seems to be well with it.
However, I need to compile the nvidia driver for it, since the binary does not work. So I copy /var/abs/extra/nvidia and modify the PKGBUILD and nvidia.install files per the instructions on this wiki page, and run makepkg -i -c .
I get a big error message early on, saying
If you are using a Linux 2.4 kernel, please make sure
you either have configured kernel sources matching your
kernel or the correct set of kernel headers installed
on your system.
If you are using a Linux 2.6 kernel, please make sure
you have configured kernel sources matching your kernel
installed on your system. If you specified a separate
output directory using either the "KBUILD_OUTPUT" or
the "O" KBUILD parameter, make sure to specify this
directory with the SYSOUT environment variable or with
the equivalent nvidia-installer command line option.
Depending on where and how the kernel sources (or the
kernel headers) were installed, you may need to specify
their location with the SYSSRC environment variable or
the equivalent nvidia-installer command line option.
*** Unable to determine the target kernel version. ***
I've checked everything I can think of.
$ uname -r
2.6.25-tablet
ls -l /usr/src shows linux-2.6.25-tablet, and linux is a symlink to it. /lib/modules/2.6.25-tablet/build is also symlinked to the right kernel source tree.
So I'm out of ideas for why the nvidia makefile can't seem to find the kernel source.
Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

@klixon:
I think that may be the root of the trouble: I compiled the kernel on my desktop (C2D 2.8) rather than my wussy laptop (1.6 Centrino). It installed and ran fine and all that, but I only have the kernel source tree that was included in the package, not the one that really compiled the code. Would simply copying it suffice, or should I rebuild the kernel on my laptop? Also, the PKGBUILD is included below.
@shazeal:
I believe this is a subset of the problem I describe above?
The PKGBUILD, somewhat customized from the nvidia ABS. I don't think any of the changes are overly shocking.
I've tried dozens of different modifications of it now. The simplest one is just appending '-tablet' to pkgname and _kernver.
# $Id: PKGBUILD 1567 2008-05-13 10:11:25Z thomas $
# Maintainer : Thomas Baechler <[email protected]>
pkgname=nvidia-tablet
pkgver=169.12
_kernver='2.6.25-tablet'
pkgrel=4
pkgdesc="NVIDIA drivers for kernel26."
arch=('i686')
ARCH=x86
url="http://www.nvidia.com/"
depends=('kernel2625-tablet' 'nvidia-utils')
conflicts=('nvidia-96xx' 'nvidia-71xx' 'nvidia-legacy')
license=('custom')
install=nvidia.install
source=(http://us.download.nvidia.com/XFree86/Linux-$ARCH/${pkgver}/NVIDIA-Linux-$ARCH-${pkgver}-pkg0.run
NVIDIA_kernel-169.12-2286310.diff)
md5sums=('e7aaca79c846e34cfe8111040bfee2d0'
'a6b6d9d7ff0306343be3fa40e72337fd')
[ "$CARCH" = "x86_64" ] && md5sums=('843a1e8bc1923ba2e4b60f6fab31ad3b'
'a6b6d9d7ff0306343be3fa40e72337fd')
build()
# Extract
cd $startdir/src/
sh NVIDIA-Linux-$ARCH-${pkgver}-pkg0.run --extract-only
cd NVIDIA-Linux-$ARCH-${pkgver}-pkg0
# Any extra patches are applied in here...
patch -Np0 -i ../NVIDIA_kernel-169.12-2286310.diff || return 1
cd usr/src/nv/
ln -s Makefile.kbuild Makefile
make SYSSRC=/usr/src/linux module || return 1
# install kernel module
mkdir -p $startdir/pkg/lib/modules/${_kernver}/kernel/drivers/video/
install -m644 nvidia.ko $startdir/pkg/lib/modules/${_kernver}/kernel/drivers/video/
sed -i -e "s/KERNEL_VERSION='.*'/KERNEL_VERSION='${_kernver}'/" $startdir/*.install