ok, there is an obvious flaw there as you point out -- modprobe does not work with the filenames themselves that end with .o, only the module name, as in "modprobe ds", as you so astutely observed. argh. that's sure *seems* to be a bug.
It's not. The script is testing for the old 2.2 directory structure. If found, it's trying to load the modules with the .o, which was needed when working with modutils for Linux 2.2.
however, building a new kernel and doing "make modules_install"
not only creates a new /lib/modules directory, but also creates
within it a $PC directory with nothing but symlinks to the actual module files under $KD.
That's odd. Wonder why it would do that?