Perhaps someone can point me to the right documentation here, or give me the answer.

So slackware uses etc/rc.d/rc.modules to load up its modules. Is this a standard, or is this a slackware specific thing?

When installing alsa, it asks me to put in the "modules.conf" these lines:

# ALSA portion
alias char-major-116 snd
alias snd-card-0 snd-intel8x0
# module options should go here

# OSS/Free portion
alias char-major-14 soundcore
alias sound-slot-0 snd-card-0

# card #1
alias sound-service-0-0 snd-mixer-oss
alias sound-service-0-1 snd-seq-oss
alias sound-service-0-3 snd-pcm-oss
alias sound-service-0-8 snd-seq-oss
alias sound-service-0-12 snd-pcm-oss

Unless I'm mistaken, Slackware doesn't have modules.conf. Should i put these in rc.modules? I see that the lines in rc.modules are set up like this

/sbin/modprobe <module name>

Will the alias command work in rc.modules? or do i need to modify the lines to something like this:

/sbin/modprobe sound-service-0-12 snd-pcm-oss

Yes, you will want to put them in rc.modules.

Compared to other Linux Distro's, its more of a Slackware thing really as Slackware tends to put most of its startup scripts, etc in /etc/rc.d

coolio,

and that alias command works in rc.modules?

i'd test it out, but i'm at work right now. I should be working at work, shouldn't i?

no, no, guys, rc.modules is old stuff, read the header.

compile kernel module loader and devfs in, slack uses kmod.

autoload is done with entries in modules.conf included by modules.devfs.

y
tom

Maybe your not familiar with Slackware at all but it actually uses /etc/rc.d/rc.modules to load modules at boot up instead of /etc/modules.conf

Regards.

sir,

# On systems using KMOD this file will be mostly commented out,

roger that?

y
tom

And I don't see anywhere in his post saying he patched his system to use kmod instead. Reread his first post, he wanted to know the difference. With Slackware 9.1, it uses the rc.modules file by default. Yes, slackware does come with a modules.conf file but most of the time its empty and by default, the modules will be called or read from rc.modules.

Regards.

PS. kmod from what I've read is a replacement for kerneld which only loads modules in a sense. It doesn't actually use the file modules.conf but rather loads them by using the modprobe command which then in turn will read from the modules.conf file but in Slackware will read from the rc.modules if you initially loaded from there, etc.

Taken from kernel documentation lists:

-Kmod is a simple replacement for kerneld. It consists of a
-request_module() replacement and a kernel thread called kmod. When the
-kernel requests a module, the kmod wakes up and execve()s modprobe,
-passing it the name that was requested.

dear Sir,

i dont agree, but if you like handywork do as you want, here's all a bootup calling rc.modules does :

### Update module dependencies ###
RELEASE=`uname -r`
# If /usr is mounted and we have 'find', we can try to take a shortcut:
if [ -x /usr/bin/find -a -e /lib/modules/$RELEASE/modules.dep \
-a /lib/modules/$RELEASE/modules.dep -nt /etc/*****modules.conf***** ]; then
NEWMODS="`/usr/bin/find /lib/modules/$RELEASE -type f -newer /lib/modules/$RELEASE/modules.dep`"
# Only rebuild dependencies if new module(s) are found:
if [ ! "" = "$NEWMODS" ]; then
echo "New kernel modules have been found in /lib/modules/$RELEASE/:"
echo "$NEWMODS"
echo "Updating module dependencies for Linux $RELEASE:"
/sbin/depmod -a
else
echo "Module dependencies up to date (no new kernel modules found)."
fi
else # we don't have find, or there is no existing modules.dep, or it is out of date.
echo "Updating module dependencies for Linux $RELEASE:"
/sbin/depmod -A
fi

...rest is commented out.

...using rc.modules instead of the kernel autoloader/REMOVER means youve to MANAGE drivers all by manual work, i wont do so.

kind regards,
tom

For Slackware 9.1 I have my scripts for Alsa 0.9.8 in modules.conf along with some scripts that load winmodem modules. It works GREAT.