can some one give me some advice in a generic fashion on loading modules into an existing kernel.

as I understand, if load module is enabled in the kernel config, then you can load modules using modprobe <module_name> without recompiling the kernel. modprobe is supposed to look inside /lib/modules/'uname -r' to find all the modules it canload.

my question is when do the modules in /lib/modules/'uname -r' get modified to incorporate the new modules? They are not affected when I re-ran make modules and make modules_install. if new modules are not added in them, it explains why I am not getting the modules I am expecting from doing make modules.

can some one please enlighten me on this?

1. make menuconfig: enable the modules (displayed by "m") you need.
2. make modules
3. make modules_install
4. modules are loaded automatically, if they are needed.

somehow, I don't find your set of instruction to work.

I heard from another thread that you should do depmod -ae. for myself, I finally got the module to be found by recompiling the kernel after the make modules_install.