Re: hardware detection + loading modules

[Joey Hess <joeyh@debian.org>]

Glenn McGrath wrote:
> If all the users hardware is supported by the kernel, then it doesnt
> need any drivers to support the hardware, hardware detection programs
> will still show what kernel modules are needed to support the hardware,
> information which is useless in this case.
> 
> We could just try and fetch and load the module anyway, but its wasted
> effort if its not needed, can anyone think of a better way to determine
> the loaded kernels capabilities ?

Well the modules if any will be in .udebs, so we'll be using
dependancies or provides or something to figure out which udeb to
install to get the module. Say it's an eepro100 driver, it might be in
common-nics.udeb, which could provide eepro100-nic. If the kernel has it
built in, the base system could have a pre-installed dummy package that
provides eepro100-nic and whatever else.

Sound good?

-- 
see shy jo