On Wed Jul 12 2000 at 15:26, "[EMAIL PROTECTED]" wrote: > Tony > But according to what I did on my PC at the office, compiling the module > inside the kernel and disabling the PNP mode of the card is sufficent and > I don't need to power off the system to boot to linux (I have both > Slackware as well as RedHat 6.1). The problem with compiling the driver into the kernel is that you loose a LOT of flexability... with modules you can load, unload and then reload the driver with different parameters. With the driver IN the kernel, parameters (if any) can only be given to it once - at boot time (as kernel parmaters on the lilo boot line). This isn't so much an issue with some ethernet drivers (?), but the ability to do this with, for example sound card drivers, is extremely useful. Also IIRC, redhat systems are set up so that when you do an "ifup" or "ifdown" command, the scripts expect the driver to be a module defined and loaded via /etc/conf.modules - so this breaks. (But this is a minor point, easy to cope with). Point I'm trying to make is that it is "good policy" to have as much as possible ALL drivers compiled as modules. (There are exceptions of course, eg, if you need a network driver at boottime for an nfsroot'ed kernel). I guess it is extremely important that *I* build kernels like this, as I deal with lots of computers, all different hardware. For my home box, this wouldn't be so much of an issue, and probably the same for your work pc. But if I had a 3c509b card, I'd trade it asap for a trouble-free 3c905b :) [I hope 3Com have learned a big lesson with what they did to the 509b cards.] Cheers Tony
