Re: [gentoo-dev] Loading Modules from Init Scripts?

[Craig M. Reece]

On Friday 25 January 2002 05:31 pm, Chad M. Huneycutt wrote thusly:
> Hi all,
>     Do we have a policy about init scripts loading modules?  I didn't think
> the scripts for any packages that I have installed load modules, but I
> don't have everything installed.  It seems like the preferred way to do it
> is to have the admin put any necessary modules in /etc/modules.autoload.
>

My impression is that /etc/modules.autoload is used for modules that you 
_always_ want loaded. Thus, the init script should load its own needed stuff 
since we would then be assuming that the script is not _always_ run.

>     Here is why I ask.  The pcmcia init script that is installed with
> pcmcia-cs currently is outdated, but it loads the $PCIC (i82365 or
> yenta_socket) module, as well as pcmcia_core and ds.  Then it starts
> cardmgr (which will not start without ds loaded).  The init script does not
> unload the modules when it is stopped, though.
>
>     It makes sense that if a service requires particular kernel
> functionality to be available in order to work that it should load the
> modules for that functionality.  However, this adds some overhead to the
> initscript, in that you have to determine if the module exists, load it,
> make sure it loads, etc. before starting the service.  Then what about when
> the functionality has been built into the kernel, not as a module.  Do we
> have to detect that?  That is why I think it might be easier if we make it
> policy to just eerror out and say "You have to first load these modules!"
> rather than worrying about loading them in the script.
>
>     If we decide to load modules from the scripts, then it would be nice to
> have some convenience routines to facilitate the process, e.g.,
>
>      load_modules pcmcia_core i82365 ds || die
>
> or something like that, which would check to see if the modules were
> already loaded (or maybe even compiled into the kernel), and if not, then
> it would load them.
>
> Thoughts?
>

I like this method a lot better than the way the pcmcia-cs package's default 
init goes about doing things.