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How to control which device driver should be loaded to use?

My HP notebook has a "Broadcom Corporation BCM4322 802.11a/b/g/n Wireless" adapter, and my system is Slackware 14.1.
And, the default driver was not suite for that device, i have to install a new module named wl from slackbuilds.org: broadcom-sta-6.30.223.141.
Then, I have to run two command every time of booting the system:
/sbin/modprobe -r b44 b43 b43legacy ssb brcmsmac
/sbin/modprobe wl

And, I don't like that, I hope the system can do all works by itself, recognize the device and load the right driver. Or is there a way that, I can control which drivers should be loaded or not?

Hi,
yes you can blacklist the b44 (and friends) and tell the system to load wl at boot time. Exactly how to do that is distro specific, and not being a slacker I don't know the answer off the top of my head. However, I do know of the existence of the much touted slackbook, so I had a look:

http://www.slackbook.org/html/system...KERNEL-MODULES

An explicit answer is not given there, but the very last sentence provides a tantilising hint :-)

HTH,

Evo2.

Quote:

Originally Posted by evo2 (Post 5132935)

Exactly how to do that is distro specific, and not being a slacker I don't know the answer off the top of my head.

Then why did you answer on a Slackware forum?

I'm certainly willing to believe that you mean well, but perhaps you should provide advice about things for which you do have knowledge.

Quote:

Originally Posted by kcynice (Post 5132913)

In this case, you would want to blacklist the b44, b43, b43legacy, ssb, and brcmsmac kernel modules by adding them to /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf (or by adding an additional file in the same directory which does so) and by adding a new file in the same directory that contains a line such as "alias <devicename> wl" where <devicename> is probably wlan0.

Please read the modprobe.d man page by running the command

Code:

man modprobe.d

. (That's what the README file in /etc/modprobe.d tells you to do.)

If you have further questions about this, please ask. Someone around here will answer you.

Hi,

Quote:

Originally Posted by Richard Cranium (Post 5132937)

Then why did you answer on a Slackware forum?

- Because the question had gone unanswered for more than 1.5 hours (on a subforum that is usually extremely active)
- The question was of a general nature (although the answer is distro specific)
- The answer could be found in the documentation with a matter of minutes - it is usually best to show people how to find a solution instead of just handing it to them.

Quote:

I'm certainly willing to believe that you mean well, but perhaps you should provide advice about things for which you do have knowledge.

See the above.

Cheers,

Evo2.

Edit:

/etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf

and add these lines:

Code:

blacklist b44

blacklist b43

blacklist b43legacy

blacklist ssb

blacklist brcmsmac

udev will then autoload the wl driver from now on.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Richard Cranium (Post 5132939)

Code:

man modprobe.d

. (That's what the README file in /etc/modprobe.d tells you to do.)

If you have further questions about this, please ask. Someone around here will answer you.

Thanks for your reply, I have a look from "man modprobe.d" and add a file at /etc/modprobe.d, named wireless.conf:

Code:

blacklist b44 b43 b43legacy ssb brcmsmac 

install wl

and got a warning at booting time:

Code:

libkmod: kmod_config_parse: /etc/modprobe.d/wireless.conf line 2: ignoring bad line starting with 'install'

libkmod: kmod_config_parse: /etc/modprobe.d/wireless.conf line 2: ignoring bad line starting with 'install'.

Maybe isn't the case for this broadcom driver, but I have a fax-modem card driver that
isn't loaded automatically, so I added the driver in /etc/rc.d/rc.modules-...
Am I right doing this? So far it's working.