On 01/02/2005 02:15 PM, nate s wrote:
On Thu, 30 Dec 2004 16:27:34 -0500, Michael T. DeanOK, I tried to cut it back to the "some light" you requested. I guess now I have to bring out my million-candle-power spotlight... :)
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
On 12/13/2004 06:50 PM, Jarod Wilson wrote:
Specifically, any distro using Linux 2.6 should be using modprobe.confOn Monday 13 December 2004 15:27, Schwarz, Robert P wrote:
I have been fighting sound for several days and have finally resolved my[...]
problem. In the write up by Robert Kulagowski he refers to adding lines
to "modules.conf" in Jarod's document he refers to adding lines to
"modprobe.conf". I was having sound issues until I copied lines from
modules.conf to modprobe.conf.
Can someone provide some light on this to me?Some distros use modules.conf, some use modprobe.conf. Apparently, whatever
distro you're using uses modprobe.conf.
and any distro using Linux 2.4 should be using modules.conf.
What about the distros that can use either, such as gentoo?
By "any distro using Linux 2.x," I meant, literally, "any distro *that is* using Linux 2.x." In other words, since any distro built around Linux 2.4 can be upgraded to use Linux 2.6 with a kernel compile and a few other changes, it's not so much a Gentoo vs. Debian vs. SUSE vs. Fedora Core kind of thing. It's not even a "which-kernel-shipped-with-my-distro" kind of thing. It's really dependant on the kernel *currently* in use on the system.
The Linux 2.4 kernel requires the modutils package ( ftp://ftp.kernel.org/pub/linux/utils/kernel/modutils/v2.4/ ) to handle loading and removing kernel modules and other kernel-module maintenance. The modprobe and depmod commands from the modutils package use the configuration file modules.conf.
The Linux 2.6 kernel (technically, 2.5.48 and above) requires the module-init-tools package ( ftp://ftp.kernel.org/pub/linux/utils/kernel/module-init-tools/ ) for the same. The modprobe command from the module-init-tools package uses the configuration file modprobe.conf. (Note, also, that neither configuration file is used by the kernel itself.)
One *mandatory* requirement for upgrading from a Linux 2.4 kernel to a Linux 2.6 kernel is to install module-init-tools. During the install, module-init-tools can be instructed to move the modutil binaries to "*.old" (i.e. modprobe becomes modprobe.old). Then, it installs the new binaries (i.e. modprobe). From this point on, when the new binaries are run, the first thing they do is check the version of the running kernel. If it's a 2.4 kernel, they pass the command to the "*.old" binary. If it's a 2.6 kernel, they execute the command themselves. This allows you to upgrade your system from Linux 2.4 to Linux 2.6, and then boot back into Linux 2.4 when you realize that installing a Linux 2.6 kernel on a system built around a Linux 2.4 kernel adds little and causes many problems. (Not because of problems with the kernel, but because of problems with the thousands of (improperly written) applications on your system built around the Linux 2.4 kernel...)
However, that being said, I included the words, "should be using." By that I meant that it's always possible that the distro packagers decided to do things differently. For example, Red Hat, having developed much of the code for the Native POSIX Thread Library (NPTL), which requires a kernel that supports Thread-Local Storage (TLS)--in other words, a Linux 2.6 kernel--decided they wanted NPTL available in Linux 2.4, so they patched the 2.4 kernel to support TLS (leaving a kernel vaguely-reminiscent of the Linux kernel :) and back-ported NPTL to work with their modified-Linux-2.4 kernel. Similarly, any distribution packager could decide that they want to modify the source of modutils/module-init-tools to make the package work with the "wrong" kernel version. I'm not saying that any do--I really couldn't tell you since I haven't used all distros (actually, I don't use any distro)--but I seldom say never. ;)
Gentoo uses modules.conf; is modprobe.conf not compatiable with a 2.4 kernel,Correct. The format of modprobe.conf has changed rather dramatically from the format of modules.conf. The most noticeable example being that all of the "add above" and "add below" commands in modules.conf have been replaced with a much-more straight-forward "install" command. While the "install" command is much more straight-forward--with it you simply provide the commands that should be executed (in the order in which they should be executed) when a module install is requested--many people who have years of experience (dating back to Linux 2.2 days) with modutil's modules.conf format have complained that it's much more difficult to use. Probably much of this comes from the fact that when installing module-init-tools on a Linux 2.4 system, you can use a contributed script (generate-modprobe.conf) to generate a modprobe.conf by reading your modules.conf and checking your current kernel configuration. Unfortunately, this script is something of a "modprobe.conf-obfuscator" as it provides all the configuration information you could possibly need (i.e. taking a 26-line, 717-character modules.conf and outputting a 171-line, 5968-character modprobe.conf--in my case, at least. ;) Manually creating an equally functional configuration files leaves 21 lines and 847 characters...
while modules.conf is with a 2.6?
True. The alias configuration line is still the same--and is often the most-commonly-used line in the file--making (correctly-written, not "obfuscated") modprobe.conf files look very much like modules.conf files.The files look so similar
From man 5 modprobe.conf ( http://www.die.net/doc/linux/man/man5/modprobe.conf.5.html ):
The format of modprobe.conf is simple... The syntax is a simplification of modules.conf
See also man 5 modules.conf ( http://www.die.net/doc/linux/man/man5/modules.conf.5.html ) for further comparison.
that I doubt it would matter very much either way. If indeed both kernels would work with both, then I think it is more of a distro-specific thing than a kernel-specific one.
I would agree, if your assumption were correct. ;)
Also, do all other (single-kernel) distros follow this?
I think I answered this one above...
HTH.
Mike _______________________________________________ mythtv-users mailing list [email protected] http://mythtv.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mythtv-users
