Module tricks

[Timothy Murphy]

aKarl Larsen wrote:
 
>     It has been awhile since I cared what the kernel has in it. But as I
> thought "lsmod" will list everything in the kernel and it still does. I
> did a lsmod and found the modules for WiFi were not in the kernel. The
> kernel I am using on the laptop is supposed to have all the WiFi modules.

lsmod lists the modules that are loaded.
In the case of distribution kernels
this is a tiny proportion of the modules in (or with) the kernel.

>     So I did a modprobe ipw2100 and it seemed to work. I looked with
> lsmod and sure enough the it and ieee81102 was also in the kernel. It
> didn't start WiFi working yet. I looked at /var/log/messages and it
> showed both modules loading properly but for some reason NetworkManager
> was not interested in finding WiFi. I need to do something else.

This is a minority opinion,
but I am not a great fan of NM (NetworkManager).

If WiFi is working then NM isn't really necessary;
and if it is not working then NM just adds another layer of confusion
to an already confused situation.

Personally, I would stop NM, look at the entries
in /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-*
and make sure they are reasonable,
and then say "service network restart".

>     Be aware that if you modprobe a module into the kernel it goes away
> with a reboot.

You can probably make an entry in modprobe.conf to make sure it is loaded.


-- 
Timothy Murphy  
e-mail (<80k only): tim /at/ birdsnest.maths.tcd.ie
tel: +353-86-2336090, +353-1-2842366
s-mail: School of Mathematics, Trinity College, Dublin 2, Ireland