What's loading my NIC module?

raypen · 05-09-2008, 09:27 AM

A question I've had for some time now centers on module loading. As an
example, my NIC (3COM) is compiled as a module in all kernel variations
on my Slack 12 system (2.6.21.5) but nowhere is there an rc.netdevice
nor is the card's modprobe entry uncommented in rc.modules.

I suspected that this was something peculiar to the 2.6 kernel versions
so I checked another system running Slack 10.2 (2.4.31) and was surprised
to see the same lack of rc.netdevice or uncommented entry in rc.modules.

However, ps -A tells me that udevd is a running process on both systems
even though a comment in rc.S on 10.2 says udev is to be loaded only for
2.6 kernels. Slack 12 contains the following comments about udev in rc.S:

Quote:

... in the 2.6.x kernels, udev has taken over the job of hotplug
(finding hardware and loading the kernel modules for it, as well as creating device nodes in /dev)

Is it udevd that is loading the modules and if so why is rc.modules or
rc.netdevice even mentioned any more? I suppose udevd only recognizes
hardware and certain modules like "capability" need to be loaded in the
old fashion, but they can certainly be placed somewhere else like rc.S.

BCarey · 05-09-2008, 10:14 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by raypen

A question I've had for some time now centers on module loading. As an
example, my NIC (3COM) is compiled as a module in all kernel variations
on my Slack 12 system (2.6.21.5) but nowhere is there an rc.netdevice
nor is the card's modprobe entry uncommented in rc.modules.

I suspected that this was something peculiar to the 2.6 kernel versions
so I checked another system running Slack 10.2 (2.4.31) and was surprised
to see the same lack of rc.netdevice or uncommented entry in rc.modules.

However, ps -A tells me that udevd is a running process on both systems
even though a comment in rc.S on 10.2 says udev is to be loaded only for
2.6 kernels. Slack 12 contains the following comments about udev in rc.S:

Is it udevd that is loading the modules and if so why is rc.modules or
rc.netdevice even mentioned any more? I suppose udevd only recognizes
hardware and certain modules like "capability" need to be loaded in the
old fashion, but they can certainly be placed somewhere else like rc.S.

udev loads the modules. You only have an rc.netdevice if you create one. rc.modules/rc.netdevice are still useful as you may want to load additional modules for certain things, eg. using ndiswrapper instead of the native driver, adding in power-related modules such as battery, adding in cpu frequency controls, etc.

Brian