Hello all,

Sorry if this post is a bit long winded - but I would like to prove I have tried to sort it myself and that I have RTFM'ed - if you want to just get to the question, that can be found at the end


Bit of a linux newbie, (been using it for about a month now)

I have Debian Sarge r2 (2.6.8-2-686 kernel)

Everything is fine except 1 small niggling issue. When I boot linux, it loads all its modules as normal, loads genrtc (can you guess where this is going ) then goes on to load rtc. Which of course is pointless as genrtc is already loaded, and so I get an error message.

Now while this doesnt really matter, I thought this would be a good exercise to stop one or the other from loading, and learn a bit about how Linux works under the hood. So a bit of reading tells me to look in /etc/modules

So I have a look there, and no mention of genrtc or rtc. So I cd to /etc and grep "rtc" * (which if im not mistaken should search all files and tell me where rtc is right in the directory /etc ?)

well, I have one entry in modules.conf, except its an alias (char-major-10-135 rtc) I understand that if I type off besides this, this will switch rtc off? - can't I just take it out of whatever script is loading it (even though I can't find it)

*EDIT*
Tried commenting that alias line out, also tried typing off at the end of it. Still nothing

Is genrtc and rtc compiled into the kernel, and I just need to recompile it and take one or the other out?


The question:

How do I stop both genrtc and rtc from loading, and only load one?

If it's a module:

echo rtc >> /etc/hotplug/blacklist


Cheers,
Tink

Hi Tinkster,

Thanks for that


Am I right in saying then that genrtc is loading (first obviously) then when the hotplug subsystem is starting it's detecting my hardware clock, and trying to load the clock module for it as well then?

Reason I ask is merely just to understand Linux a bit more, as up until now I had thought that as it was booting, it was loading modules from a list from various places

That's how it is in the 2.4 kernels. All modules get loaded via
/etc/modules.conf or a script.

In 2.6 you can leave it all up to hotplug, or disable hotplug and
use modprobe.conf.


Cheers,
Tink