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just a little background for the (bi)curious |
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|
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modutils-2.4.x provided a way for the user to customize |
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things: /etc/modules.conf. here users could control aliases and options and |
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do all sort of neat tricks when loading/unloading modules. the problem was |
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that it didnt allow for packages to easily provide their own little snippets. |
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should all those packages get folded into modules.conf ? should you just |
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grep/cat the file onto modules.conf ? it's a nightmare. |
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|
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so distros invented /etc/modules.d/. now packages could manage their little |
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pieces in this directory all by themselves. the only problem was that |
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modutils knew nothing of this. it only knew modules.conf. so distros had to |
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write a little bit of glue where the conf file would be autogenerated by all |
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the pieces in modules.d. life, while better, is still kind of a pain. |
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|
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when module-init-tools-2.6.x came out, peeps had learned from the past. this |
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means they changed two things: they included native support for a modprobe.d |
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directory and they removed support for certain syntax deemed a pita. this |
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syntax change is why we have a new modprobe.d instead of just using the old |
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modules.d. however, the behavior is this: if /etc/modprobe.conf exists, use |
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that, otherwise scan the modprobe.d directory. |
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|
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now distros have yet another problem. they've got packages that provide old |
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snippets in /etc/modules.d/ and new snippets in /etc/modprobe.d/. so in |
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comes the lube again. we automatically combine these directories and form an |
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old-compatible modules.conf file and a new compatible modprobe.conf. what |
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would be ideal is for all of this lube to go away. thus the latest |
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update-modules script whines like a brat whenever a file is found |
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in /etc/modules.d/. by being proactive here and scuttling all the modules.d |
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pieces, we will be left with only /etc/modprobe.d/. that means no more |
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annoying messages during boot "Updating modules.xxxx ..." which serves to |
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slow things down. on my amd64 system with very few files, that still takes |
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~2 friggin seconds. |
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|
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less stuff to do at boot => faster boot time => maintainers get a whiny notice |
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-mike |