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The Linux kernel fails to auto-load modules

Symptoms:

If doing /etc/rc.d/init.d/network doesn't work because it can't load modules (as in, the only way that it works is when you modprobe eth# for every needed module)
if ppp dies saying "this kernel doesn't support PPP"
(assuming you got the pppd to run) pppd hangs a bit, and then says
```
LCP: Timeout sending Config-Requests
```

These are just some of the symptoms of the kernel not auto-loading modules. The whole concept of the kernel auto-loading modules was something of a bit of magic that was introduced with a thing called KERNELD and later replaced with KMOD. First of all, make sure your kernel has been configured with one of those enabled. To tell KMOD where the modprobe program is, do this command:

echo /sbin/modprobe > /proc/sys/kernel/modprobe

Unless you do that, then the the KMOD doesn't know how to run probes for loading new modules, so it may seem that KMOD isn't working.

Also (from the Documentation/modules.txt) you may want to unload unused modules, using a cron line like:

0-59 * * * *	/sbin/rmmod -a

Last updated on 2005-07-29 14:00:00 -0700, by Shalom Craimer

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