Alright, here's the deal. I'm definitely a new linux user (so, please be gentle, and please be detailed). I just loaded it up with... Redhat 9 something or other (which, after browsing some of this forum, may not have been a good idea, but it's what i had). I'm trying to install a driver for my ethernet card (a netgear FA311, if you were wondering, and i know you were). i have the cd, i follow its instructions, and then it comes to this part where it tells me to insert the driver as module, using the insmod command (insmod fa31x.0, is what it says). I try. I really do. but all i get is

bash: insmod: command not found

well, i'm not a complete newb (i am, but i try and make myself feel better), so i punch in a find thing (this may seem stupid to some of you gurus, but i'm just trying hard). i enter it like this

find /* *insmod*

now, i'm assuming that what this does is begins at the base directory (/), and looks EVERYWHERE for anything that has insmod in it (i could be wrong). it finds nothing. not good for me. and so, i come before you now, to plead my case, in hopes that you, the veterans of linux, can come to my aid. thank you, and have a good day (any questions, feel free to ask, i'll try and answer)

Were you root when you ran insmod? Programs like that that make system-wide changes require you to be root. Type "su" to become root (entering your password when prompted), and "exit" when you're done to return to your normal user.

yes, i was logged in as root (i had tried, unknowingly, to run it before, and it said access denied, so i logged in as root, and that's when i get the whole command not found thing)

What happens if you type "which insmod" and "whereis insmod" as root?

it says 'no insmod in: ' and then it lists my $PATH directories

whoa, sorry man. i only did the which insmod. when i did the whereis insmod, it says it's in /sbin ... i think we solved it. if not, i'll post back. thanks again

If you didn't figure it out, what is the output of "ls -l /sbin/insmod" and "echo $PATH" as root?

um... not sure what you mean by figure it out, but here's the current situation (which is now a bit different from earlier...) i enter:

/sbin/insmod fa31x.o

and the shell says ' Warning: loading fa31x.o will taint the kernel: no license ' and then the computer locks up... which isn't a good sign, in my mind.

ls -l /sbin/insmod gives me:

-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 146112 Feb 11 2003 /sbin/insmod

and echo $PATH gives me:

/usr/local/bin:/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/X11R6/bin:/home/me/bin

It looks like /sbin isn't in your PATH for some reason so you have to type the full path to insmod to run it. You can type "export PATH=$PATH:/sbin" or put that in /root/.bashrc to fix that. The second thing is that it's usually advised to use modprobe instead of insmod to insert kernel modules (I'm not sure what the difference is, but I know it's suggested to use modprobe).

As far as tainting the kernel goes, that message shows up when you're trying to load a module that doesn't have a license that's compatible with the kernel's GPL. That won't mess anything up, as I understand it it just means you won't be able to submit bug reports or anything to people working on the kernel since it now contains code they can't look at.

I'm afraid I don't know why it's locking up, though, so someone else will have to help from this point.

well, i thank you for all of your help, i will try the modprobe approach, and if that doesn't work, i'll create a new thread (since this one's title is now obsolete)

Just figured out a major difference between insmod and modprobe, by the way. Insmod simply loads the module, where modprobe does more checking (e.g. finding and loading dependencies).