Excuse me if what follows is a silly question, but the background is
that I installed SL kernel sources in order to be able to compile some
additional kernel modules.

I didn't intend to rebuild the kernel itself, in other words: I
intended to run one of the regular SL kernels.

The additional modules in question failed to work correctly, and I've
concluded that this was because they couldn't find the
/usr/src/linux-2.4/.config file which described the regular SL kernel
which I am running.

I managed to work-around the problem by identifying what appeared to
be the appropriate configuration from /usr/src/linux.../configs/ ,
and copying it into the expected place.

I'm not sure that there even -is- a correct solution to this - after
all, there could be several different kernels installed, with
different .config options.  When one installs a specific pre-built
kernel, does it come with its own .config file?  If so, where can that
file be found? Is it good or bad practice for third-party kernel
source to go looking for it?

But for the specific situation that I'm currently dealing with, this
workaround seems to have done the trick.

Any thoughts, please?

all the best