From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Thu Jan 20 13:00:06 2005 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 65B5A16A4CE for ; Thu, 20 Jan 2005 13:00:06 +0000 (GMT) Received: from www.wcborstel.nl (wcborstel.demon.nl [82.161.134.53]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 1602943D55 for ; Thu, 20 Jan 2005 13:00:06 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from jorn@wcborstel.nl) Received: from localhost (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by www.wcborstel.nl (Postfix) with ESMTP id EF86A4391; Thu, 20 Jan 2005 14:00:56 +0100 (CET) Received: from www.wcborstel.nl ([127.0.0.1]) by localhost (www.wcborstel.nl [127.0.0.1]) (amavisd-new, port 10024) with ESMTP id 76784-08; Thu, 20 Jan 2005 14:00:55 +0100 (CET) Received: from www.wcborstel.nl (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by www.wcborstel.nl (Postfix) with ESMTP id 3555B421A; Thu, 20 Jan 2005 14:00:55 +0100 (CET) From: "Jorn Argelo" To: Ramiro Aceves , freebsd-questions-en Date: Thu, 20 Jan 2005 14:00:55 +0100 Message-Id: <20050120125840.M1382@wcborstel.nl> In-Reply-To: <41EFA65E.80307@wanadoo.es> References: <41EFA65E.80307@wanadoo.es> X-Mailer: Open WebMail 2.41 20040926 X-OriginatingIP: 82.161.134.53 (jorn) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 X-Virus-Scanned: by amavisd-new at mail.wcborstel.nl Subject: Re: I do not understand kernel modules X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.1 Precedence: list List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Thu, 20 Jan 2005 13:00:06 -0000 On Thu, 20 Jan 2005 13:38:54 +0100, Ramiro Aceves wrote > Hello friends. > > I am a FreeBSD newbie, I am going to ask you a question that I have not > been able to solve reading the manual. I am using 5.3 release. I have > compiled a custom kernel in my old pentium 75 MHz machine to include > the driver for my sound card. I added the following lines to the kernel > config file > > device sound > device "snd_es137x" > > and compiled the kernel perfectly. (long time.... ;-) ) > > But there is something that I do not understand well. When I look at > the contents of /boot/kernel/ directory, I found that there are > kernel sound modules *.ko for every sound card the kernel supports. > Should not there be my sound card module alone? Does It mean that > you have to compile all the stuff, even if you are going to use only > one kind of sound card? Am I missing something? Your sound card has been build into the kernel itself (which is /boot/kernel/ kernel AFAIK). The *.ko are kernel modules, which you can load using the kldload command. So in case you get a new sound card, find out what driver it supports and you can use kldload .ko to get support for your sound card without recompiling your kernel. Cheers, Jorn