Re: GENERIC kernel "modules" implementation info?

[Eric Haszlakiewicz <erh%nimenees.com@localhost>]

On Mon, Dec 21, 2009 at 11:43:03PM -0000, yancm%sdf.lonestar.org@localhost 
wrote:
> What controls which modules get compiled/installed into /stand
> /i386/5.99.22? Apparently not the kernel config????

No, modules aren't dependent on the kernel config, so there's no
need to build them each time.  Your "build.sh install DESTDIR=/"
command is probably what built them.

> What I'm not getting is that in the GENERIC kernel config, all file
> systems, including ffs, are commented out. I still got the error message
> about not having ffs even though the FFS lkm is in /stand/i386/5.99.22.
> 
> Once I uncommented the: "file-system FFS" line in the GENERIC kernel, it
> booted OK.

hmm... how is the kernel supposed to load the modules if the code to
mount the filesystem is a module itself?  On Hubert's blog there's a
post tha lists the output from modstat as having a "SOURCE" column,
and ffs shows up with a source of "boot".  (other values are "filesys"
and "builtin")  None of my machines has a sufficiently up to date
modstat man page to explain what those values mean, but I'm guessing
that "boot" means something like "loaded by grub" (which can load
more than just the kernel)

eric