[gentoo-user] Removing Packages with Portage

[Matt Causey]

Hello all!

I am a Gentoo n00b.  I have  question about what the 'expected
behaviour' is/should be when removing packages under Gentoo package
management.  So I read this document:

http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/handbook/handbook-x86.xml?style=printable&full=1#book_part2

And it says, to remove software, use  'emerge --unmerge'.  Cool, yeah
that seems to do what I expect... So, I have a package madwifi-ng,
which contains some kernel modules.  I want to emerge --unmerge that
package, because I want to make those drivers go away.  That seems to
go well, as when I search for it in portage it show all non-installed
and stuff:

prometheus ~ # emerge --search madwifi-ng
Searching...
[ Results for search key : madwifi-ng ]
[ Applications found : 2 ]

*  net-wireless/madwifi-ng
      Latest version available: 0.9.4
      Latest version installed: [ Not Installed ]
      Size of files: 3,403 kB
      Homepage:      http://www.madwifi-project.org/
      Description:   Next Generation driver for Atheros based IEEE
802.11a/b/g wireless LAN cards
      License:       atheros-hal || ( BSD GPL-2 )

Buuut, there are still kernel modules there, which are owned by that package:

prometheus ~ # ls -lah /lib/modules/2.6.28-gentoo-r5/net/ath_pci.ko
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 77K May  3 20:43
/lib/modules/2.6.28-gentoo-r5/net/ath_pci.ko
prometheus ~ #

and of course they still load.

Sooo, my question.  What is the expected behaviour here?  Are the
ebuilds intended to maintain knowledge of the files they put on a
system, so they can remove the binaries when --unmerge'd?  Are kernel
modules handled differently because of the possibility of damaging a
working system?

Thanks!

--
Matt