Re: Nic card modules
Piero <ludovico.ariosto@wanadoo.fr> writes:
> A question about Nic cards and modules.
> This is the output of "ifconfig eth0":
>
> eth0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:05:5D:AA:3B:E0
> inet addr:192.168.0.3 Bcast:192.168.0.255 Mask:255.255.255.0
> UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
>
> And this are a few lines from "dmesg":
>
> pcnet32.c: PCI bios is present, checking for devices...
> via-rhine.c:v1.08b-LK1.0.1 12/14/2000 Written by Donald Becker
> http://www.scyld.com/network/via-rhine.html
> eth0: VIA VT6102 Rhine-II at 0xb800, 00:05:5d:aa:3b:e0, IRQ 11.
> eth0: MII PHY found at address 8, status 0x782d advertising 05e1 Link 45e1.
>
> From all this, I entail that my Nic card, a Dlink dfe-530tx (module
> Via-rhine) is working.
Yes, I would agree with that.
> But the output of "lsmod" is:
>
> Module Size Used by
> slip 7252 2 (autoclean)
> slhc 4336 1 (autoclean) [slip]
> af_packet 6136 2 (autoclean)
> nls_cp437 3896 2 (autoclean)
>
> So, no Via-rhine module seems to be present.
The kernel contains a set of drivers; these can exist as modules, or
be compiled directly into the kernel. In your case, it strongly looks
like the network driver you care about is part of the kernel; it won't
show up in the output of lsmod, and you shouldn't have a corresponding
.o file in /lib/modules/$KVERS. This is a valid configuration setup;
if everything works, you shouldn't worry about it.
> The ouptut of "modprobe via-rhine" is:
>
> Hint: insmod errors can be caused by incorrect module parameters,
> including invalid IO or IRQ parameters
> /lib/modules/2.2.20-idepci/net/via-rhine.o: init_module: Device or
> resource busy
("Something else is already using this device", which in this case
would be the built-in kernel driver.)
> File /etc/modules has the following (scheletric) content:
>
> # /etc/modules: kernel modules to load at boot time.
> #
> # This file should contain the names of kernel modules that are
> # to be loaded at boot time, one per line. Comments begin with
> # a "#", and everything on the line after them are ignored.
You could list extra modules to be loaded at boot time here. If you
needed via-rhine as a loadable module, then you could add a line at
the end of the file that just said "via-rhine", for example. But the
default /etc/modules file is empty, so no modules are automatically
loaded.
> Have nic cards modules special properties? Do they have a different
> name when they are loadable and when they are loaded?
No, not terribly.
--
David Maze dmaze@debian.org http://people.debian.org/~dmaze/
"Theoretical politics is interesting. Politicking should be illegal."
-- Abra Mitchell
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