Kernel versions and module loading
Hi,
I have a woody laptop and upgraded the kernel to 2.4.18. The new kernel
uses the yenta_socket and tulip for the ethernet card whereas with the
2.2.x kernel used the tulip_cb driver.
Now if I try to boot the old kernel the network stuff won't work right.
Here is what I found. The following kernel related things all have
version numbers:
/boot/vmlinuz-<version>
/boot/System.map-<version>
/boot/initrd.img-<version> I gather for pre file system mounted module
loading e.g. ext3
/lib/modules/<version>
It seems to me that there should be seperate /etc/modules-<version>
files as well as that seems to be the only thing stopping seemless
booting from version to version. At least at first blush.
The /etc/init.d/modutils script is what loads the modules and prints the
'Calculating module dependencies' line in the boot sequence. It calls
depmod -a which creates the /lib/modules/<version>/modules.dep file
AFAIK so it understands the kernel version. Later in the script it loops
through the entries in /etc/modules and calls modprobe.
Couldn't this script use uname -r and then load /etc/modules-<version>
where version comes from the uname -r output?
This I think would make everything work better you could have different
kernel versions and custom versions etc. work together better. Comments
and suggestions welcome.
Eric
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