I would like to ask a general question first, as I don't know, but learning. I thought if you make a kernel module instead of directly building support into the kernel that it would load when needed, or does it? For example, Redhat 9.0 has kernel module support built into the kernel by default for most 3com network cards at that date, and lets say after installation I install one. Will the kernel load the module into itself allowing me to use the device or do I have to. How do you know it even has support when it does, if it doesn't configure itself and work then what command can I use to check that I can bring if up by using ifconfig eth0 up. Is their also a way to check what modules the kernel has at its disposal, not what is loaded . I ask this because as you can guess I'm running Redhat 9.0 and have no network support(I have to use this version for a commercial application that depends on the kernel for driver support) and I'm running on a nforce 3 mobo with a 1000M/b 3com network card. Any help would be appreciated, yes I did install the rpm kernel patch for nforce 3 for redhat 9.0 and it didn't change anything, although I installed I think the wrong one, as I looked I had kernel 2.4.20-8 and I installed ~2.4.20-6.rpm by accident and when using rpm -e <name> it just says not installed, but I saw it load.

bump*

I would really like to just now the general question of modules loading and well the question is above. If a moderator sees this then maybe I would get more response if this was moved to the kernel section.

There has to be an initscript that runs as part of the startup that tells the system to load a kernel driver module. Recent distros have an autodetect mechanism that matches detected hardware to the drivers needed for that hardware, and loads the right driver. This usually works, though I have seen it go badly wrong for some things even in recent distros.

An older distro such as you have won't autodetect; you'll have to tell it to load a driver. You probably (not sure...that distro is old and I don't recall exactly) will specify the driver for it in /etc/modules.conf.

Thanks, I just wondered how it worked for past and modern systems.