On Fri, 10 Oct 2003, Mark Ferlatte wrote:
> Cristian Ionescu-Idbohrn said on Fri, Oct 10, 2003 at 06:42:53PM +0200:
> > On Sun, 5 Oct 2003, Rob wrote:
> >
> > > I've installed the kernel-image-2.4.22-1-686 package. Until now, I've
> > > been running the 2.4.18-bf2.4 kernel. Though I didn't change what
> > > modules I load, with this new kernel package have come a whole bunch of
> > > new modules that are being loaded. I've run modconfig and removed them,
> > > but they continue to to load at boot.
> >
> > This insane behaviour is caused by initrd:
>
> The behavior is not insane. Prior to 2.4.20, the IDE driver was
> monolithic. As of 2.4.21, it got split into a bunch of chipset specific
> drivers. The kernel maintainer wisely decided to not change the
> existing functional behavior of the kernel, and so loads all of those
> drivers anyway since he doesn't know which of them you are using.
With all due respect for the our kernel maintainer, Herbert Xu, throwing
up all those ide-driver modules (on a scsi only box, or anywhere else) is
IMHO insane :(
> If it really bothers you, make a new initrd.img with only the IDE driver
> that you need.
At least provide some sort of hook one could use to cleanup that module
jungle. Ideally, automatic detection of what is usable ('cat /proc/pci |
grep -i ide' or lspci?) and removal of the useless junk, would be an
elegant solution to this problem.
Cheers,
Cristian
