Moving F7

[Craig White]

On Wed, 2007-09-26 at 20:08 -0400, William Case wrote:
> > > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loadable_kernel_module
> > >   
> >     I went to this web page and it says no-one understands this.
> What a 
> > barfing crap that is. Why not just tell me?
> 
> I would tell you if I could.
> 
> Karl, I copied this page to show others how little info there is on
> the
> subject of modules and how useless that info is as an answer for a
> simple question.  I.E.  What is a module?
> 
> I agree with you.  I too want to know what a module is.  The questions
> I
> asked where potential answers that I hoped people who know more than
> me
> would use as a guide. 
----
quick answer

a kernel is either monolithic or modular

monolithic means device drivers etc. are all rolled into kernel.
modular means device drivers etc. are loaded as instructed/needed.

Linux (at least as provided by Red Hat / Fedora) is configured with
modular kernels. Special purpose devices (typically embedded Linux would
often be monolithic).

device drivers needed to get access to local filesystems, thus part of
boot process must be loaded somehow, hence the point of initrd.

modules would necessarily be loaded from booted kernel via
/lib/modules/kernel-2.6.22-xxxx/...

It's not that hard to understand

-- 
Craig White <craig at tobyhouse.com>