Proper way to autoload modules (/etc/rc.modules)?

[Peter Backlund]

sön 2005-04-03 klockan 13:26 +0200 skrev Axel Thimm:
> Hi,
> 
> what is the recommended way to automatically load some modules upon
> bootup?

The "correct" way to autload modules would really be to load-on-demand,
which is (as you probably know) configured in /etc/modprobe.conf. The
art of aliasing has always been a bit obscure, imo. As far as I
understand, you can load-on-demand when accessing /dev files based on
char-major, for example

alias char-major-195 nvidia

which would load the nvidia module when any /dev/nvidia* device is
accessed (they have char-major 195). But then there are things like
"alias sound-slot-0 foo" and "alias eth0 bar", that don't have a
corresponding /dev node...I have no idea how that works really. If
anyone knows a good place to read up on that, I'd be grateful.         

> If there is no better mechanism, then please consider shipping an
> /etc/rc.modules that sources in /etc/rc.modules.d/* or similar, so
> packages can simply drop in a module loading script.

I'd like to see (and this has been suggested before)
an /etc/modprobe.conf.d/, where modprobe.conf snippets can be placed. It
would make 3:rd party kernel module packaging easier and cleaner.


/Peter