Comment 12 for bug 303795

On a fully-updated Karmic I had the same problem while installing a custom kernel compiled with make-kpkg.
Installing this package solved the problem:

http://linux.dell.com/dkms/permalink/dkms_2.1.1.2-0ubuntu1_all.deb

Hope this will help those who cannot upgrade to (still unstable) Lucid that uses the updated package.