Adding forgotten kernel module without complete recompile

[Bruce Marshall]

On Sunday 13 July 2003 14:09 pm, Klaus-Peter Schrage wrote:
> Bruce Marshall wrote:
> >Supposing there is a device I just invented called a Belchfire 90
> >mob-ulator... and I write a module for it.  How could the kernel
> >possibly use my module?  It wouldn't know when to call it...  Same
> > thing goes for a new USB device that hasn't been defined to the USB
> > modules.
> >
> >If the ALSA modules can be compiled and supplied out of the blue... 
> > then either they don't rely on the kernel or the kernel has been
> > told about them.
>
> Telling the kernel about foreign modules, isn't that the job of the
> "alias" lines in modules.conf?
> There I have:
> ..
> alias snd-card-0 snd-ice1712
> ..
> alias char-major-195 nvidia
> among many others, the right-hand side always pointing to a file in
> /lib/modules/2.4.21/kernel/
> Klaus
>

Not in my not-so-expert opinion.   The purpose of the alias statements 
are to tell the kernel that instead of looking for module xyz that it 
would normally look for, instead look for module  qrs.  Just an alias 
for a module that was already being looked for.  But if the kernel 
didn't know to look for xyz...  the statement would have no effect.

In your first alias above...  (snd-card-0), the kernel may get a request 
to call the sound card module (snd-card-0) which really is just a 
pseudo-name for any of a dozen or more modules that handle various sound 
cards, and the alias above is going to get the right card module for 
YOUR system called.  My alias for the same snd-card-0 looks like:

alias snd-card-0 snd-ens1371


(We have different sound cards)





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-- 
+----------------------------------------------------------------------------+
+ Bruce S. Marshall  bmarsh at bmarsh.com  Bellaire, MI         07/13/03 
14:30  +
+----------------------------------------------------------------------------+
"College isn't the place to go for ideas." - Hellen Keller