Here are indicated some advices on compiling a kernel on a Debian system:
Install these packages: kernel-package, bzip2, libncurses5-dev
Uncompress the kernel under /usr/src/kernel-source-version
If a file .config is already available copy it into kernel source directory.
Always run make menuconfig (or another kernel configuration command), even if the file .config has been copied, and save the configuration (even if no modification have been done. This to prevent using a config file of an older kernel version with a new one.
Run:
make-kpkg clean |
to clean kernel source directory. This has to be done every time that make menuconfig is called and before the next step.
Run:
make-kpkg --version 1.0 --append-to-version -lvm kernel_image |
to compile the kernel, modules and create the kernel package. The kernel package is created in /usr/src