I just finished recompiling a new 2.6.2 kernel. When I loaded it up, I found that the af_packet module needed for networking was compiled as a module and not as part of the kernel. This caused the /etc/init.d/network script to throw errors about ARP not being part of the address family. When I do a modprobe af_packet and restart the network it works fine.

The trick is getting this to work when the system boots. My solution was to just put the following at the to of /etc/init.d/network:I found that when I reran modprobe after loading this module the first time gave an error message, hence the -q switch. Does this seem reasonable or should I do this somewhere else? TIA.

Do you have a module.autoload file in /etc? Or perhaps a modules.autoload.d directory? The way my gentoo system is setup, I add the module to the correct kernel version file in /etc/modules.autoload.d/ and it loads it before starting any of the other services.

I know my slackware system doesn't quite work this way, but on that I add it to the rc.modules file in /etc/rc.d. I am sure your distribution has some place it intends all modules to be loaded at boot (that will occur before any services need the modules).