From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Sun Feb 7 08:20:05 2010 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [IPv6:2001:4f8:fff6::34]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 0B6C21065670 for ; Sun, 7 Feb 2010 08:20:05 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from sonicy@otenet.gr) Received: from rosebud.otenet.gr (rosebud.otenet.gr [83.235.67.32]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 8975E8FC15 for ; Sun, 7 Feb 2010 08:20:04 +0000 (UTC) Received: from pulstar.local (athedsl-4567694.home.otenet.gr [94.70.126.150]) by rosebud.otenet.gr (8.13.8/8.13.8/Debian-3) with ESMTP id o178K2Hm018566 for ; Sun, 7 Feb 2010 10:20:02 +0200 Message-ID: <4B6E77B2.3080300@otenet.gr> Date: Sun, 07 Feb 2010 10:20:02 +0200 From: Manolis Kiagias User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; Intel Mac OS X 10.6; en-US; rv:1.9.1.7) Gecko/20100111 Thunderbird/3.0.1 MIME-Version: 1.0 To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org References: <4B6E3623.2070109@colannino.org> In-Reply-To: <4B6E3623.2070109@colannino.org> X-Enigmail-Version: 1.0.1 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Subject: Re: Modules and Custom Kernels X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Sun, 07 Feb 2010 08:20:05 -0000 On 07/02/2010 5:40 π.μ., James Colannino wrote: > Hey everyone. Please bear with me as I'm very new to FreeBSD. I've > recently started building a custom kernel after having had to apply a > patch to enable support for my wireless device (Atheros 9285) in > 8.0-RELEASE, and had a quick question about the process in general. > > > According to the documentation, a line with device will > cause that driver to be compiled into the kernel. If one of those lines > is commented out, does that mean that the driver will still be built, > but that it will be installed as a module? Yes. Unless you have set some variables like WITHOUT_MODULES or MODULES_OVERRIDE in /etc/make.conf. By default all modules will be built. The modules will not be loaded automatically though. You will have to use /boot/loader.conf to specify which ones to load. > I didn't see anything that > told me that explicitly in the documentation, but that's the feeling I > got from what I read. I just want to make sure that my assumption is > correct, and if not, how to make sure that something gets built as a > module rather than built directly into the kernel. > You are doing just fine ;) > In all, the process looks relatively painless as long as I'm careful not > to make too many changes to the GENERIC config. > This is true also. Using some common sense and reading the comments in GENERIC you can make your own custom kernel with little effort. Of course you may also read the Handbook on this: http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en/books/handbook/kernelconfig.html > Hopefully this isn't a dumb question :) I really like FreeBSD so far, > and think I'm going to enjoy my new experience quite a bit. > > > Sure you will, FreeBSD is addictive!