Date: Sun, 7 Feb 2010 18:14:21 +0200 From: David Naylor <naylor.b.david@gmail.com> To: James Colannino <james@colannino.org> Cc: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Modules and Custom Kernels Message-ID: <201002071814.25374.naylor.b.david@gmail.com> In-Reply-To: <4B6E3623.2070109@colannino.org> References: <4B6E3623.2070109@colannino.org>
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--nextPart2098885.e8g3DqyreY Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Hi James On Sunday 07 February 2010 05:40:19 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. If you are building custom kernels then you are not that new to FreeBSD ;-) > According to the documentation, a line with device <driver name> 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? 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. Not all devices have a corresponding module (or some are bundled together i= n a=20 single module). Most of the devices you are interested in do have modules = but=20 the module names are not always the same as the device name (i.e. network=20 devices have a if_ prefixed to the module name). =20 =46or further information have a look at the manual pages for a given devic= e. =20 e.g. `man 4 bge` shows that bge requires devices miibus and bge in the kern= el=20 or can be loaded using `if_bge_load=3D"YES"` in loader.conf(5). This impli= es=20 the module name is if_bge. `man 4 sc` shows that no module is available (b= ut=20 it does have many options that can be specified in the kernel configuration= =20 file). =20 By default all modules are built (even those whose devices are build in the= =20 kernel). This behaviour can be changed. For a list of all the modules=20 available look at /sys/modules and `ls /boot/kernel/*.ko`. =20 > In all, the process looks relatively painless as long as I'm careful not > to make too many changes to the GENERIC config. I normally just copy GENERIC and tweak it but there are better ways than th= is. =20 > 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. Not at all. Enjoy :-) Regards, David --nextPart2098885.e8g3DqyreY Content-Type: application/pgp-signature; name=signature.asc Content-Description: This is a digitally signed message part. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v2.0.14 (FreeBSD) iEYEABECAAYFAktu5uEACgkQUaaFgP9pFrIURACggvKsyV35iIZBEN6N20MFa6Nu dAUAn33TeSjJdrObkVvxPHLs2jo6F/1K =E88a -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- --nextPart2098885.e8g3DqyreY--
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