If you are using lirc, you might have noticed, that you can not compile the modules of the latest stable version (0.8.0) with a kernel 2.6.17 or higher. The reason for this is, that devfs was removed from the kernel from that version on. This problem seems to be fixed in lirc-0.8.1pre2. This release compiled cleanly and works for me. I guess there will be a new stable version soon as well. An alternative solution would be to patch devfs back into your kernel, but I would only recommend that, if you have more problems with that kernel. For lirc it is not necessary.