Re: drivers in linux
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On Thu, Jan 11, 2007 at 11:43:22PM +0000, Andrew Critchlow wrote:
> Can anyone please explain to me how drivers work in linux/debian?
> I am a newbie and have come over from microsoft. So my knowledge is of drivers
> and device manager and stuff from windows.
>
>
> Is there such a device manager in linux/debian?
> And if I was to install a network card for example how could I check to see if
> it was installed correctly (without trying it), how would I install drivers for
> it etc?
>
Hi Andrew,
hardware->kernel modules->kernel->software
When hardware is detected, there is some attempt by certain programs to
'load kernel modules' to enable the kernel to access the hardware. So if
a device is detected, you or some other program needs to load the kernel
modules for it. In most cases, it will happen 'automagically' (without
user intervention). If not, then ask here.
Kerneles can have built-in modules and loaded modules. The built-in ones
can be see by examining the /boot/config-$(uname -r) (in my case
config-2.6.18-3-686) with 'grep "=y" /boot/config-2.6.18-3-686'.
The ones that have been loaded can be seen by 'lsmod'. You can see all the
choices by doing 'grep "=m" /boot/config-2.6.18.3-686'. To load modules,
you type 'modprobe $MODULE'. If you want to load the pc speaker beep
module (/lib/modules/2.6.18-3-686/kernel/drivers/input/misc/pcspkr.ko),
you'd type 'modprobe pcspkr' (note the removal of '.ko').
Once you have the modules loaded for your hardware, you can check its
status by using the appropriate tool. In the case of network cards:
'ifconfig' (network InterFace CONFIGuration)
some tools to see what hardware are seen (but not necessarity avaiable
to the kernel) are 'lspci', 'lsusb' and dmesg.
cheers,
Kev
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