I've never understood how you manage kernel modules at boot time

[Mike Oliver]

Quoting Lennart Sorensen <lsorense-1wCw9BSqJbv44Nm34jS7GywD8/FfD2ys at public.gmane.org>:
>
> If you have a static /dev directory, then you might have something like
> this:
>
> crw-rw---- 1 root video 195,   0 2008-02-17 10:39 /dev/nvidia0
>
> This character device has majpr 195 and minor 0.  So if you try to open
> it, and the kernel goes "No driver is handling that major/minor right
> now, so I will ask modprobe for help".
>
> modprobe then sees an alias that says anything with major 195 on a
> character device should load something named 'nvidia' so it loads the
> module nvidia and returns to the kernel.  Hopefully the nvidia module
> then loaded and now provides a driver for the character device 195,0 and
> the original request can proceed, otherwise the kernel returns -ENODEV
> to the program trying to open /dev/nvidia0.

OK, this is some help, thanks; I'll look at my /dev directory when I get
home.  But I still don't understand the sequence of events.  I *don't*
try to open /dev/nvidia0; it's some script at boot time that does that,
I suppose (or would if I used nVidia), but I don't know which script or
how to find it.  Grepping through the various /etc/rcN.d/ directories is
tedious and has not historically seemed to turn up what I'm looking for,
quite possibly because I don't *know* what I'm looking for.

--
The Toronto Linux Users Group.      Meetings: http://gtalug.org/
TLUG requests: Linux topics, No HTML, wrap text below 80 columns
How to UNSUBSCRIBE: http://gtalug.org/wiki/Mailing_lists