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. welcome to the dark side... > > > Is there such a device manager in linux/debian? no not really. and there is no need for one. upon booting, the linux kernel digs through all the hardware it can find on the system and attempts to automatically load the appropriate "drivers" (typically called modules). If it can't find a module for a particular piece of hardware, it will continue its boot process quite happily. Later in the boot process a special hardware detection system called udev comes into play and it does the same thing -- looks at the hardware and attempts to load modules for it. A well configured kernel will have already done all this and udev won't do much upon booting. Later, if you plug in a usb device, for example, udev will notice it and automatically load the drivers for you :). > 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? For the vast majority of *supported* hardware, there is no need to install drivers. They come with the kernel and install themselves. It will be frustrating and confusing at first, but later, when you get the hang of it, you'll marvel at how you did windows before. For a few bits of *supported* hardware, you will find that the drivers are not in the kernel or its modules. In that case you'll have to find, download and install the modules. Its not hard. Ask here and we'll help. SO, for your network card. Put the card in, boot the system, watch the messages scroll by. if you see anything starting "ethx" where x is some number, usually 0, then you've got a network card detected by the kernel and probably running. You can confirm this many ways. I usually ping www.google.com as its the best check of whether its working or not. If the boot messages went by too fast, you can see them again with the "dmesg" command. It will scroll them all by again really fast. so try "dmesg | less" which will give you a pager to view it with. type "q" to exit. you can scan for messages about "eth" as above. more ways to see your network card: the command "lspci" (as in "list pci bus") will show you all the devices on the pci bus and what the kernel thinks they are. If the network card is there, it will be obvious. okay, have fun. the best way to do this is to just do it. A
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