Background: My laptop (Acer Aspire 5602WLMi) has an ipw3945 wireless
card. I have been succesful in compiling the driver needed for this
card and I can connect to my AP. However I still have to load the
driver from the source directory using './load debug=0' because
modprobe cannot find the module (driver):
# /sbin/modprobe --ignore-install ipw3945
FATAL: Module ipw3945 not found.
I (obviously) get the same error at boot time.
According to the ipw3945 documentation I had to copy the ipw3945.ko
file to /lib/modules/$(uname -r) but that does not appear to be enough
(for Debian?). The documentation I can find on modules (modprobe,
modutils, etc.) in the Debian reference, the Debian wiki and
google/linux appears to be fragmented, outdated and incomplete. I am
probably using the wrong keywords but I can't find information on how
the entire "module system" is working in Debian (or Linux in general).
Where can I find an overview of which components are needed and how
they work together? How should extra modules like this one be
installed?
I have found that module-init-tools replaces modutils since kernel
2.5.48 but I have both on my system:
# dpkg -l "modu*" | grep ii
ii module-assistant 0.10.6 tool to make module package
creation easier
ii module-init-tools 3.2.2-3 tools for managing Linux kernel
modules
ii modutils 2.4.27.0-6 Linux module utilities
I have the following configuration files on my system:
# lh -d /etc/mod*
drwxr-xr-x 3 root root 384 2006-10-08 17:45 /etc/modprobe.d/
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 239 2006-07-28 22:11 /etc/modules
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 18K 2006-10-08 17:44 /etc/modules.conf
drwxr-xr-x 3 root root 336 2006-10-08 17:44 /etc/modutils/
I am running debian testing with a self-compiled kernel.