NI-DAQmx Base consists of two totally different parts. The USB devices (9211, 9215, 6008, 6009) work through NI-VISA. They do not use a kernel module of any kind. This is why they will work even if the kernel module is not installed (say like on a 2.6 kernel).
The other part is for PCI devices. For the kernel module to install, you need the kernel sources for your current kernel installed and the kernel needs to be 2.4.*. I have run or seen it run on Red Hat 7.2, 7.3, 9.0, and SuSE 8.0 and 9.0. The most common mistake in all of this is not having the kernel sources installed. When you run the install script, we leave all of the make errors visible because it could be many things that could cause the kernel module to not compile and load. By letting that information be printed, we hope that the problem can be resolved.
Please try installing all of the kernel sources and then going to /usr/local/natinst/nidaqmxbase/src and run as root:
make
make install
These are the instructions that the installer says to do if the kernel module will not compile.
Randy Hoskin
Measurements RLP (NI-DAQmx Base)
National Instruments