Inserting modules at boot (was Re: FC1 and Laptops?)

[Matthew Saltzman]

On Thu, 22 Apr 2004, Alexander Dalloz wrote:

> Am Do, den 22.04.2004 schrieb Rick Stevens um 21:35:
>
> > Never heard of /etc/rc.modules.  You can put a "modprobe" command in the
> > /etc/rc.d/init.d script that needs the module when the program that
> > needs it is started.  For examples, see /etc/rc.d/init.d/iscsi.
>
> Another possibility would be modprobing from /etc/rc.sysinit, like it is
> done for the ACPI modules, see lines 172 - 177. Of course, if you have a
> dedicated init script for a specific service, then modprobing inside
> this specific script like the in this thread mentioned
> /etc/init.d/cpudynd would be best.

One generally does not like to modify scripts that are installed by RPMs,
in particular system-critical RPMs like initscripts.  They have a nasty
habit of getting overwritten when one upgrades (unlike config files, which
are generally handled specially by rpm).  One has been bitten by this in
the past 8^(.

I beleive that Mandrake and Debian have a file /etc/modules where modules
can be listed that are to be installed at the start of rc.sysinit (before
/etc/rcX.d/S* are run).  But lines 433 - 436 of Fedora's /etc/rc.sysinit
are:

    # Load modules (for backward compatibility with VARs)
    if [ -f /etc/rc.modules ]; then
            /etc/rc.modules
    fi

That does the job, but I worry that anything listed as "for backward
compatibility" might disappear without warning.  And there does not seem
to be any way to get modules force-loaded from /etc/modules.conf.

In /etc/rc.modules, I have:

    #!/bin/sh
    /sbin/modprobe speedstep-centrino

And when /etc/rc5.d/S05cpudynd starts, it works perfectly.

-- 
		Matthew Saltzman

Clemson University Math Sciences
mjs AT clemson DOT edu
http://www.math.clemson.edu/~mjs