[Beowulf] Re: cloning issue, hidden module dependency

[David Mathog]

Bogdan Costescu wrote:
> On Thu, 11 Dec 2008, David Mathog wrote:
> 
> > install usb-interface /sbin/modprobe uhci_hcd; /bin/true
> > install ide-controller /sbin/modprobe via82cxxx; /sbin/modprobe
> > ide_generic; /bin/true
> 
> I don't know why you need these. On all the distributions that I've 
> worked with recently such issues are taken care of by running 
> 'depmod', the resulting files are taken into consideration when 
> running 'mkinitrd'.

The kernel doesn't have either the via82cxxx or USB_UHCI_HCD
modules built into it.  These lines apparently tell
mkinitrd to include the needed modules in the initrd, and also to add
some corresponding modprobe lines in the init file which it contains.
> 
> > alias pci:v000010ECd00008139sv000010ECsd00008139bc02sc00i00 8139too
> 
> And why do you need this ? Didn't the module detect this hardware ?

This one is mysterious to me too.  Those sorts of lines only appeared
with Mandriva 2008.1 (kernel 2.6.24.7).  The 8139too is built as a
module, but it isn't included in the initrd, so that isn't it.  All I
can tell you is that every Mandriva 2008.1 system I have installed
created a similar line for its ethernet driver (whatever that happened
to be), and when there were two such interfaces which were identical,
there was only one such line. It seems to be related to this line in
/lib/modules/*/modules.alias

alias pci:v000010ECd00008139sv*sd*bc*sc*i* 8139too

There are many other similar lines in modules.alias, differing in the
leading numeric field, but only this one pattern matches with the one
from modprobe.conf.  Why this one and not the others - I have no idea.

Regards,

David Mathog
mathog at caltech.edu
Manager, Sequence Analysis Facility, Biology Division, Caltech