Re: What's the different between kmod/kerneld?

[David Z Maze <dmaze@debian.org>]

"Jones" <ddthief@optushome.com.au> writes:

> 1.  (*) text/plain          ( ) text/html           

#include <canonical-email-formatting-rant>

> I am a newbie in Linux and I have started using it 3 months ago.  I
> know that "modules.conf" is used to record the modules for loading
> during system start, which is used by kerneld.  righ!?

Well, no, not really:

-- /etc/modules contains a listing of module names that are loaded
   (with 'modprobe') at boot time;

-- /etc/modules.conf contains configuration for modprobe, which
   includes autoloading information; but on Debian,

-- /etc/modutils/* are fragments of modules.conf (you can create your
   own if you want), and 'update-modules' will rebuild modules.conf
   from this.

> But what about kmod???  Some documents said it is written to replace
> kerneld but I just don't know how to use it.

kmod is a newer version of kerneld, yes; I think kerneld last existed
in the 2.0.x kernel series.  They both work pretty much the same way,
though: you open, say, /dev/audio, which is a character-special device
with major number 14, minor number 4.  If there isn't already a driver
loaded, the kernel runs 'modprobe /dev/audio and 'modprobe
char-major-14'; if both of these fail, you get an error ("device not
found" or some such).  Otherwise, if /etc/modules.conf lists an alias
for one or the other of these, the relevant module is loaded and used
to handle the request.

-- 
David Maze         dmaze@debian.org      http://people.debian.org/~dmaze/
"Theoretical politics is interesting.  Politicking should be illegal."
	-- Abra Mitchell