modprobe.conf questions

[Bruce Pennypacker]

Hi all,

I'm building up a new Fedora Core 3 box on an AMD Athlon system to use 
as a mythtv server.  I have a strong software background but I'm not 
much of a hardware type, and I'm trying to figure out why some things 
don't seem to be working as expected.  In this box I have both a 
Hauppauge WinTV PVR-350 card and a pcHDTV HD-3000 card.  I've got all 
the appropriate modules compiled and I can load them manually via 
modprobe.  I've found documentation that says the following should be 
added to /etc/modprobe.conf so that the system will find the WinTV 
hardware automatically:

alias char-major-81 videodev
alias char-major-81-0 ivtv
install ivtv { /sbin/modprobe tveeprom ; /sbin/modprobe tuner ; 
/sbin/modprobe --ignore-install ivtv }

Well I've added that to my modprobe.conf and tried rebooting but the 
system never loads these modules on its own.  If I execute the modprobe 
commands manually after it's finished rebooting then they load 
absolutely fine.  There's no hint in the syslog that it even tried to 
load these modules...

I guess my biggest question is how do I know what the correct alias is 
for each device?  What exactly do the various "char-major-" entries mean 
in modprobe.conf?  I've been having similar problems with the HD-3000 
card.  I really don't want to end up having to add a whole bunch of 
modprobes, etc. to my /etc/rc.local.

Thanks,

-Bruce