HOWTO Build DKMS debs w/ Debian & Ubuntu systems Copyright 2008 Dell Inc. Author: Mario Limonciello ------------ A dkms deb is a common representation of a DKMS package that can be distributed across multiple machines. After you have a functional DKMS package, you can follow these steps to build a DKMS deb. 1) Start out by putting together a tree in /usr/src/PACKAGE-VERSION. For our example, we are going to use the PACKAGE lirc and VERSION 0.8.3~pre1. Create a dkms.conf per the recommendations in the DKMS guide. 2) "Add" the package to the dkms tree system: dkms add -m lirc -v 0.8.3~pre1 3) "Build" the binary modules for the current kernel: dkms build -m lirc -v 0.8.3~pre1 4) Make the deb and/or dsc for the package: dkms mkdeb -m lirc -v 0.8.3~pre1 dkms mkdsc -m lirc -v 0.8.3~pre1 The end result will be a deb and/or dsc in /var/lib/dkms/lirc/0.8.3~pre1/deb or /var/lib/dkms/lirc/0.8.3~pre1/dsc ------------ If you would prefer not to contaminate your system with the changes from building these debs, you should create a framework.conf that contains these variables (adjust for your use case): source_tree="/path/to/source/tree" dkms_tree="/path/to/dkms/tree" You will then call DKMS with an extra variable, '--dkmsframework'. Here is an example of how this would work using the same lirc example above: dkms add -m lirc -v 0.8.3~pre1 --dkmsframework framework.conf dkms build -m lirc -v 0.8.3~pre1 --dkmsframework framework.conf dkms mkdeb -m lirc -v 0.8.3~pre1 --dkmsframework framework.conf dkms mkdsc -m lirc -v 0.8.3~pre1 --dkmsframework framework.conf The end result will be both a debian binary package and a debian source package that you can use.