Martin <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> uttered the following thing: > $author = "Henry T Wijaya" ; > > > > 1) what's the difference between module & 'compiling into kernel'? > > My intuition is that module is 'called' the kernel is trying to access a > > particular hardware, while 'compiling into kernel' is including the > > module into the kernel. Right? > > compiled in - this functionality is loaded at boot and is available all the > time... > > module - this is dynamically loaded when required. only uses memory when > loaded. can cause problems if the boot kernel can't access modules for one > reason or another (a common catch 22 is to have filesystem support for the > partition that has the modules compiled as a module. you can't mount the > filesystem without the module, can't load the module because the filesystem > isn't mounted).
Or in other words, "comiled in" means its all sitting in your "vmlinuz" kernel file and cant be removed without recompiling. For modules, think in terms of a .so or a .dll - it's a file that contains the code for that "driver". "insmod <module>" is the way to load it (or modern distros use "modprobe" or some such - but dont ask me about them as I'm one of those that still 'ifconfig's interfaces and uses rc.local) > > 2) Since Mandrake's 8.2 installation takes care detection of all > > hardware automatically, now that I need to change a new pcmcia card, how > > do I do it? This questions leads to, since pcmcia is hot-swappable even > > when the system is on, do I need to 'switch off' the device before > > removing it or do I simply physically the card? > > i am not sure about this, but issuing a 'restart' to pcmcia services would > get it to notice the change in cards... cardctl eject cardctl insert Some cards require "preparation", such as unmounting flash disks first, other cards (serial, ethernet) you can generally just unplug at will. My newbie help for the day :) -- Ben Buxton - Random Network Person -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ More Info: http://lists.slug.org.au/listinfo/slug
