[KLUG Members] kernel 2.6 and modules.conf (and centrino).

[Bruce Smith]

Short story:  I recently upgraded my laptop to a kernel 2.6.1 RPM from
ftp://ftp.suse.com/pub/people/kraxel/  The problem is modules seem to be
no longer automatically loaded from modules.conf.  For example, I have
the following line in my /etc/modules.conf file:

alias eth0 e100

And eth0 will not start unless I manually "modprobe e100".  The same is
true for the ALSA modules.  What has changed in the 2.6 kernels???

It still seems to be using the modules.conf file because changing
options like this in the file make a real difference:

options snd snd_cards_limit=1 snd_major=116

Long story:

In my never ending quest to make the Centrino wireless work on my
laptop, I tried this free program to use the Win32 DLL drivers:
http://ndiswrapper.sourceforge.net/

The problem is it requires kernel 2.4.23 or greater, and will not
compile on 2.4.21 that comes standard with SuSE 9.0.  It is also
supported on the 2.6 kernels, which is the reason I upgraded.
Side note:  2.6 seems to be noticeably quicker than 2.4.  :-)

The driver compiles and works great on 2.6, and I'm running my centrino
wireless with a minimum amount of work.  The problem is getting all the
other things working that the non-working modules.conf broke.  Right now
I hacked a boot script and "modprobe" every module I need as a temp fix.

 - BS