I'm confused on how linux knows what modules to load during boot up?
Is there a list somewhere,

or does it just detect hardware during startup and then load the module based on what hardware it detected

or is this distribution dependent?

Thanks.

Yes -- at /etc/modules. If you wish to ensure that a module is always loaded at boot time, then the simplest thing to do is to append it to this file. In addition however, further modules may be loaded at each run level (grepping through /etc/init.d for 'modprobe' should give an idea of which ones these are).

Yes, and yes . Typically, a package such as 'discover' (Debian) may load additional modules, depending on the hardware it believes it has detected.

Cheers,

mj

can I answer "all of the above" ? :P

well... most distribution have a list in /etc, but not the all distro use the same. There is usually always a file named "modules.conf" (if I remember right? I'm not on a linux box right now) that contains some "alias". This usually tell the kernel to load the module "foo" when it need "eth0" as example (eth0 is a network card of course) or "alsa-whatever-modules" when it need "sound-card-1".

Some distro also have some other ways. As example my Gentoo has a file in /etc/modules-autoload.d (or whatever the name once again) named "kernel-2.6" or "kernel-2.4". This list contains a list of module to modprobes at the end of boot. But this is distro specific, as I said. It's possible that Fedora/Mandrake have another way.

And of course... the kernel always "try" to find the module by itself, but it rarely works (that's what alias are for)