Re: Query about initramfs and modules

[Greg KH <greg@kroah.com>]

On Tue, Jan 15, 2002 at 06:15:02PM -0500, David Garfield wrote:
> 
> Can/will the initramfs mechanism be made to implicitly load into the
> kernel the modules (or some of the modules) in the image?

Most of the mechanism for loading modules for physical devices will be
the /sbin/hotplug interface:
	- when the pci core code scans the pci bus, and finds a new
	  device, it calls out to /sbin/hotplug the pci device
	  information.
	- /sbin/hotplug looks up the pci device info and tries to match
	  it up with a driver that will work for this device (see the
	  linux-hotplug.sf.net site for more info on how this works.)
	- if it finds a module for the device, it calls modprobe on the
	  module, and now that pci device has a module loaded.

Repeat this process for the USB, IEEE1394, and other busses that support
MODULE_DEVICE_TABLE in the kernel tree.

> Doing so would allow the initramfs image to be composed solely of the
> modules to be loaded, which would reduce the need for the "klibc".  It
> would also eliminate the need for any sort of control script to be in
> the image.

klibc (or some libc) is needed to build /sbin/hotplug, and modprobe in
this scenario.

greg k-h