Re: /etc/modules, /etc/modules.conf and others

[Russell Shaw <rjshaw@iprimus.com.au>]

Matthew Weier O'Phinney wrote:
> -- J.F.Gratton <grajea02@hotmail.com> wrote
> (on Thursday, 20 February 2003, 09:53 PM -0500):
>
> > I might be using workarounds or not using my system effeciently but ....
> > I've never had to tamper with /etc/modules.conf.
> >
> > All I did so far to get modules to load and to work was to put them into
> > /etc/modules.
> >
> > For instance: on a 2.2.x kernel, my NIC module is rtl8139.o . In the
> > 2.4.x series, the module has been renamed to 8139too.o (actually it's a
> > new module, but let's not split hairs). All I did was to replace the
> > rtl8139 entry into /etc/modules with 8139too .
> >
> > What is the use of /etc/modules.conf et al. then ?
>
>
> /etc/modules is used by Debian to manually add modules the user/sysadmin
> wishes to load at boot time. After adding them, you then run
> 'update-modules' as root, which reads this,

I don't think update-modules reads /etc/modules, only the files
in /etc/modutils. If you add modules to /etc/modules and don't
need to do anything special for them, there's no need to do
update-modules.

> as well as some files in
> /etc/modutils/, to *create* /etc/modules.conf. (This script is run as
> part of /etc/init.d/modutils at boot time, in case you're wondering why
> you haven't run it yourself and things still worked.)
>
> There's a lot more to it, and this answer is definitely a bit
> simplistic, but it's the basic idea -- and it's why you don't need to
> (and *SHOULDN'T*) mess with /etc/modules.conf in Debian.