Baslinux mailing list

[<keesan2 AT cyberspace.org>]

> It's not just modprobe.  You need /etc/conf.modules.
> You need depmod (to compute the dependencies).  And
> you need modules.dep (the dependency database).
> 
> All module dependencies are listed on the Slackware 7.1
> CDrom or mirror (in /modules/2.2.16/modules.dep).  If 
> you insmod a new module and get unresolved-symbol errors, 
> find that module in modules.dep and it will probably have
> dependencies listed after it.  Just insmod those modules
> first.

Thanks.  I guess I was lucky with mdacon.o (no dependencies).


> > The BL2 kernel is about 512K and the bare.i kernel 
> > (needed in order to install sound modules) about 894K. 
> 
> The lowmem.i kernel (479kb) can also do sound -- but 
> it does not do networking.  

Which sort of rules it out for use with Realaudio ;(

I was up to 29M RAM usage with just Opera (but perhaps half of that is
cache?). Does anyone know if, once you find the URLs you need, Realaudio
can be run without a browser under Linux like it can with Win95? 

> > Do I understand correctly that the BL2 kernel was compiled
> > to support adding network modules but not to contain the 
> > actual network drivers? 
> 
> There are many different network cards.  Putting drivers
> for all those cards in the kernel would waste space.  By
> using a module, the user can install the exact driver 
> needed by his card (and none of the others).

But you did have to build in support for adding these modules?
How much extra file size or RAM usage did this add?

> > And that lowram.i will not work for BL2 users who want to 
> > go online because it does not support adding the ppp module?
> 
> Because it does not support TCP/IP networking.

I thought these were the same thing.  Anyway, lowram.i is not the answer
for working with sound online.  I suppose Realaudio is so huge that
another 500K RAM taken up by the kernel is not all that significant.

If I were, some day, to compile my own kernel that permitted the use of
sound modules, how much larger is it likely to be than zimage?  Is it
mostly drivers than makes bare.i twice the size of zimage, or what?

Thanks for all the useful and interesting information.

Sindi Keesan