[Preston] Building Modular Kernels

[Richard Revis]

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On Tuesday 16 Mar 2004 1:19 pm, Andrew King wrote:
> I'm planning
> on just switching back to compiling everything straight in for a while
> in the interests of making life easier, but just wondering if there's
> any major reason that we're supposed to use modules for that I've forgot.

The main use for modules is being able to load drivers without rebooting. For 
example when you buy a new USB pen drive - compile USB_STORAGE and deps and 
modprobe and it all works.

Unloading kernel modules has no real benefit on operation as they are 
typically a few K for highly complex drivers but it can reduce the long term 
stability of the kernel to repeatedly insert/remove things. As such I believe 
that rmmod has been either depreciated or removed in 2.6.x kernels.

- -- 
Richard Revis
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