To get my Speedtouch working under Mandrake 10o, I had to alter modprobe.conf and add the line ¨alias speedtch off¨ to prevent it using the kernel driver, rather than the user driver.

It worked wonders, I don´t know why the kernel one didn´t work, but there you go.

Now a couple of reboots later, and the line is suddenly and mysteriously missing from modprobe. So who did it and why?

I can get with all the giu support adding or changing the config files behind the scenes - that is what we want from linux to get it working for the masses. But to delete a line? At least comment it. And say why.

Now I don´t know what caused it and what sequence is going to do it again. I suspect it is the Mandrake Control Centre connection manager - but does that mean that if I manually alter any file then the gui tools are no longer any use to me? That there is a chance that they are going to do more harm than good?

Hi muff,

Mandrake uses a system called "msec" (ie, Mandrake Security) that has a nasty habit of resetting manually edited configs after a set amount of time (or a couple of reboots later.) It's meant to prevent Linux newbies from screwing around with things and messing up their system, but it also prevents advanced users from making changes -- even as root.

I personally came across this issue when Mandrake didn't let me change the permissions on /dev/mixer and /dev/dsp (rather, it changed them back when I chmod'd it), and the answer was to adjust the permissions and then edit the "/etc/security/console.perms" file to make sure it didn't swap them back. Mandrake evidently references this file every reboot and restores the settings for permission as dictated by this file.

As with the issue I encountered, there's obviously an msec generated security config somewhere in the Mandrake filesystem that instructs the system to rewrite config files at a set interval. Unfortunately, in your case, I have no idea where it is. Hopefully someone else here has had the same problem and can be more specific.

Cheers,
Tim