[ILUG] Red Hat sysinit and depmod

[John P. Looney]

On Tue, Jan 15, 2002 at 12:07:10AM +0000, Anthony mentioned:
> Hi there,
> 
> As a Linux (Red Hat 6.2) relative newbie who likes to know what is going
> on under the hood, I was going through the rc.sysinint script and
> noticed that `depmod -a' is run at each startup or reboot.

 I like this...

> I am curious as to why this is so. Surely `depmod -a' only needs to be
> ran after a kernel recompile or when the contents of the
> /lib/modules/[kernel_version] directory changes.

 Or when /etc/modules.conf changes, which is a lot more frequent.
 
> On a standard install (with PCMCIA) this directory is quite full and
> searching through all the dependencies takes a noticeable time on my
> old and creaking P120 laptop.
> 
> If anyone has any insight into why this is so, I would be delighted to
> know. 

 Well, the main reason is that not every remembers to re-run depmod. So,
it saves you booting up a buggered system where none of your modules work.

Kate

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