Andy said: > A side question if you don't mind..... > It is my understanding that people use modules > to make a lighter/smaller kernel. Is that correct? > Other reasons....?
some things cannot be compiled into the kernel, or cannot be easily compiled into the kernel. examples are nvidia drivers, vmware drivers, lm_sensors, and more .. sometimes it is useful to be able to "unload" a driver perhaps to try to reset a device, or free up memory or something. also it provides limited functionality to do a "hot upgrade" on modules since the code can be removed and re-inserted(though due to many kernel things the usefulness of this in my experience is quite limited at the present time). > I have compiled kernels 30 times or so and most of the > time I have no modules loaded. (maybe because I am clueless?) no, it just means you probably don't need any modules loaded, or you don't need the functionality that modules provide. I am the same way. If it can be compiled into the kernel it will be on my systems. Which makes me sad to see that future linux kernels will be module-only. static kernels also make for easier moving kernels between machines since its just 1 file. this has helped me in the past. > Are modules supposed to load automatically? they can be, the kernel module autoloader is designed to try to automatically load any modules it "thinks" you may need, I personally do not like this feature and turn it off on all my kernels. > For example, if I don't know my sound card on my laptop, and > I load every sound module when doing xconfig, and then > upon first boot, does linux simply see what card I have and > then load appropriate module? in the case of a soundcard, probably not. but in the case of something like a USB device, a filesystem driver, a networking driver etc, the kernel module loader can try to load the driver for you. Since I build my own kernels, and know what hardware I have(&plan to use) I disable this feature so my logs don't start filling up with messages from the kernel saying it can't find XX module that it thinks I need. > You will see below he has smbfs as a module. > When I put the samba file system into my kernel as > a module, and I run lsmod, there is nothing there. > Does it get loaded if I try to mount a samba server? if you built it directly into the kernel instead of module it will be there, it loads when the kernel does, you can cat /proc/filesystems to see what filesystems are supported by the drivers you have loaded. nate -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]