FC3 (and beyond) wishlist

[Thomas Vander Stichele]

On Mon, 2004-07-19 at 22:31, Bill Nottingham wrote:
> Peter Backlund (peter.backlund at home.se) said: 
> > - modprobe.conf.d and prelink.conf.d, similar to ld.so.conf.d.
> 
> Whatever for? (in the case of modprobe.conf.d)

I agree with the original statement.  It's a lot easier to drop in
additional kernel modules if you can provide config snippets as well
that express what needs expressing to use the modules correctly.

Here are some examples:

1) ensure that the quickcam module is loaded with all compatibility
options

# webcam, quickcam
options quickcam compatible=255

2) ensure that the pwc module also loads the pwcx module

# webcam, pwc
# need -i on both since otherwise pwcx creates a dep loop to pwc
install pwc /sbin/modprobe -i pwc; /sbin/modprobe -i pwcx

3) directfb fusion driver:
alias           char-major-252          fusion

4) making sure that "modprobe lirc" loads the correct backend driver
(the file containing these entries would/could be managed by a lirc
configuration tool):
alias           char-major-61           lirc
 
# get rid of serial if it's been loaded
pre-install     lirc                    rmmod serial 2> /dev/null; true
# load lirc_serial driver (homebrew)
alias           lirc                    lirc_serial



All the tools that rely on a single configuration file invariably end up
having lots of hacks applied to them from various rpm scripts (lilo.conf
in the past, grub.conf, apache configs, modules.conf, ...) to edit
existing files, hopefully remove old entries and replace them with
current ones, failing badly in the process.  The easiest solution is for
these snippets to be in separate files managed by the package installing
them.

It might not be a direct concern/need for Red Hat given that all modules
are inside the kernel rpm, but there is a Fedora community out there
that likes to, and will, install kernel module packages that could
benefit from a more modular (haha) approach, which is a direction that
Fedora as a project in general seems to want to head into.

Thomas

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