Coming in with a problem

[<jo...@di...>]

Sorry to come in here with an install problem as my 1st message, but I suppose it's happened before ;-)

I'm trying to run LIRC on (K)ubuntu Feisty to support a Creative CIMR 100 remote receiver on com1 of my trusty old Thinkpad T22. The idea is to get the remote to control Amarok. 
I've been trying to get it going for 2 days with no success, despite studying the LIRC documentation and numerous how-tos

At the end of installing, I got the message "You will have to use the suitable kernel driver to access /dev/ttyS0" - erm, which "suitable kernel driver" ?

The only way I can get any response from irw is by running with the --nodaemon option, which returns

root@araj-laptop:/home/araj# lircd --nodaemon
lircd: lircd(creative) ready
lircd: accepted new client on /dev/lircd 
lircd: readlink() failed for "/dev/lirc"
lircd: No such file or directory
lircd: could not create lock files
lircd: caught signal
Terminated

It's true there's no /dev/lircd directory - but if there's meant to be, why wasn't this created in the install? I tried 2 new compile/configuration/installs but no /dev/lircd directory is created. Do I need to create it manually? And what's supposed to be in it? 

irexec returns

root@araj-laptop:/home/araj# irexec
irexec: could not connect to socket
irexec: Connection refused 

I'm pretty new to Ubuntu and Linux in general, so please forgive me if I'm missing the obvious - but point it out ;-)

Thanks in advance for any help !