Re: quieter fan was Re: Acer TM 634 fan always on

[Shyamal Prasad <shyamal.prasad@sbcglobal.net>]

    "Emma" == Emma Jane Hogbin <emmajane@xtrinsic.com> writes:

    Emma> Well the fan's still on, but it's quieter now. :) I had to
    Emma> do "modprobe" instead of "insmod" to get the modules
    Emma> loaded. Why does one work but not the other?

Hi Emma,

To quote from 'man modprobe':

   Modprobe uses a "Makefile"-like dependency file, created by depmod,
   to automatically load the relevant module(s) from the set of
   modules available in predefined directory trees.

and further

   Modprobe will automatically load all base modules needed in a
   module stack, as described by the dependency file modules.dep.  If
   the loading of one of these modules fails, the whole current stack
   of modules loaded in the current session will be unloaded
   automatically.

Basically, modprobe will preload anything the module your are loading
needs.  On the other hand, insmod installs exactly the module you
name, even though it might not be enough to have just that one
module. 

Since modprobe figures out dependencies for you (at least as far as
your depmod output is up to date), it is the command you should
prefer.

Cheers!
Shyamal