Hello everyone.

I have a question regarding a interesting thing that happened when I setup our last server with a RH 7.3 install.

The server is a 2.8ghz Xeon processor, with the option to eventually add a second CPU.

The install went well, no problems at all. I had to download the nic drivers and compile the module to get the NIC working. Simple enough, but a weird thing happened.

After the install, upon the first boot to GRUB, I noticed that there were two kernels installed during the installation: one for SMP and the second just a normal setup. Im guessing that the SMP kernel is used to take advantage of a second CPU if one is installed, correct?

Anyways, I booted into the normal kernel and proceeded to install the module and configure the network. No problem. I then rebooted the machine and the booted again into the same kernel just to make sure the module was loading. It was.

Now, this is where it gets weird and I get confused.

I then rebooted the server and walked away. When I came back, the server had booted to the SMP kernel (was the first kernel on the grub list.) Anyways, I logged into the system and proceeded o do a lsmod.

The e1000 driver was not there. So I tried to enter insmod e1000 and it kicked out a bunch of errors. I was confused and not sure what was going on.

So what I did was recompile the module when I was booted into the SMP kernel. The compile and network config went fine. After a reboot to the SMP kernel, the NIC module was loading no problem.

I verified that both kernels were working correctly with the NIC module by booting into both of them and verifying the NIC module was loading. It was, which is great.

So my question is, what was going on? Is that normal?

Can someone explain to me what was happening there?

Thanks.

Tarballed

Yes... this is normal. Each kernel version stores its modules in a different directory under /lib/modules

Do an "ls /lib/modules" and you will see one directory for SMP and the other is for uni-processor.

If you do an "rmmod e1000" and then an "insmod e1000" you will see that there is a different specific location for this driver for each kernel you are booted to.

-KevinJ