modules in kernel 2.6
 

I uderstand that with kernel 2.4 if you wanted to update the /etc/modules.conf file you went to the directory /etc/modutils and either edited a file there or added a short text file of your own, and then executed 'update-modules'. If you have a 2.6 kernel you add or change files in /etc/modprobe.d and then what? Do you run 'update-modules' and can you have both directories on your system? Is there a good page for this?

If you have a 2.6 kernel you add or change files in /etc/modprobe.d and then what?

Edit /etc/modprobe.conf adding "include /etc/modprobe.d/newfilename" line for each of your files.

Some people claim that simply adding "include /etc/modprobe.d" works, but not for me. It needs the full path/filename.

Don't know about any page where it is listed but when you add the file in the modprobe.d directory with a 2.6 kernel you need to do nothing else the file will be processed on boot and the options/settings in it will be used by modutils or if using modprobe to load the module these settings are used as well, also the two directories are on my system so apparently they co-exist without problems.

while we're on the subject, what does a line in one of those directories (files) that starts with the word 'alias' do? Just curious...

It tells the system which module is to be used for a device or you can use this for instance if you have two network cards and want to control which gets detected as the first one you use something like alias eth0 via-rhine and alias eth1 3c95x in a file, this tells the system the via-rhine is to be eth0 regardless of how the system finds the cards on boot.